From owner-freebsd-arch Wed Feb 12 7:21:36 2003 Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 23DB837B405 for ; Wed, 12 Feb 2003 07:21:35 -0800 (PST) Received: from smtp-relay.omnis.com (smtp-relay.omnis.com [216.239.128.27]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9692D43F93 for ; Wed, 12 Feb 2003 07:21:34 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from wes@softweyr.com) Received: from softweyr.homeunix.net (66-75-151-22.san.rr.com [66.75.151.22]) by smtp-relay.omnis.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id CCA3542EF4; Wed, 12 Feb 2003 07:21:33 -0800 (PST) From: Wes Peters Organization: Softweyr To: Garrett Wollman Subject: Re: syslog.conf syntax change (multiple program/host specifications) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 15:21:33 +0000 User-Agent: KMail/1.5 Cc: arch@FreeBSD.org References: <20030210114930.GB90800@melusine.cuivre.fr.eu.org> <200302120632.36583.wes@softweyr.com> <200302121411.h1CEBRSe025071@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu> In-Reply-To: <200302121411.h1CEBRSe025071@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200302121521.33506.wes@softweyr.com> Sender: owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Wednesday 12 February 2003 14:11, Garrett Wollman wrote: > < said: > > I'd much prefer to develop a simple yacc-able grammar and > > develope the configuration parser that way, or use a key=value > > configuration, so human beings can understand the configuration > > with a program to help them. > > I don't think either of these is truly a useful answer, particularly > for something like syslog which is already straining for a more > expressive syntax. There are just too many little languages in the > system already, each one subtly different in syntax, such that it's > nearly impossible to do anything programmatic with them that isn't > built in to the program that they configure. So you're preferring the software over the human operator. In my world view, that is completely whacked. It works fine if you're planning on providing a program to present the configuration to the user in a GUI or some such interface, but not at all if you expect the user to edit the configuration file as the normal mode of configuring the program. Is THAT answer useful enough? -- Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket? Wes Peters wes@softweyr.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message