Xfce does one thing very right: It stores its settings in plain-text XML files. This allows me to easily read, track, and maybe even distribute these settings to other machines.

(Unlike GNOME’s dconf, which uses some binary file format. Fun fact: The older and now deprecated gconf also used XML files.)

(#euobsca) @kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz I kind of like XML because it’s mostly well-defined and easy for humans to read (unlike YAML, which is a complete mess, imho) … and at the same time, it can get complicated really fast. 🫤 But at least it’s plain-text – that’s the important part in this case. 😅

(#euobsca) @movq@www.uninformativ.de @kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz Any text format beats a binary configuration format. However, YAML and XML are both terrible choices in my opinion. I’d prefer YAML over XML if I had to.

(#euobsca) @lyse@lyse.isobeef.org @kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz I spent so much time in the past figuring out if something is a dict or a list in YAML, for example.

What are the types in this example?

items:
- part_no:   A4786
  descrip:   Water Bucket (Filled)
  price:     1.47
  quantity:  4
- part_no:   E1628
  descrip:   High Heeled "Ruby" Slippers
  size:      8
  price:     133.7
  quantity:  1

items is a dict containing … a list of two other dicts? Right?

It is quite hard for me to grasp the structure of YAML docs. 😢

The big advantage of YAML (and JSON and TOML) is that it’s much easier to write code for those formats, than it is with XML. json.loads() and you’re done.

(#euobsca) @movq@www.uninformativ.de I found it quite easy to mentally parse this structure.

(#euobsca) @lyse@lyse.isobeef.org So it might just be what the youngsters call a “skill issue”? 😅

(#euobsca) @movq@www.uninformativ.de @kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz I’m just used to it because I deal with such things all the time. :-)

(#euobsca) Look at that, a mate just told me: What if YAML had even more security issues!? YAMLScript! https://yamlscript.org/doc/cheat/