[gfsd]Re: gas/binutils (a.k.a. we really suck sometimes)

[Bradley M. Kuhn]

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> wrote:

>     there should be the HTML file and then an XML file with the Free
>     Software directory entry.
> 
> The format we use for these files is not XML.  We could switch over to
> XML, but that takes work, and I am not sure it has any advantage.

If I were designing the Free Software Directory from scratch, I would choose
XML.  However, we already have a well-defined format, that is easy to parse.

As long as the format stays well-defined, we can switch to XML whenever we
want, by writing a program to reformat the files.  That isn't too much work.

However, it's a lot of work to retrain people who already know how to edit
the existing format.  And, XML formats can be confusing to non-hackers.

So, I suggest we don't bother to switch, and if people need the files in an
XML, we can always write a program to convert the existing format to an XML
format.

The important challenges I see right now for the Free Software Directory is
writing more entries, and writing a better HTML-rendering of the directory.
I encourage people to work on that first, rather than an XML based-format.

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