[OT] Re: [Catalyst] ANNOUNCE:Catalyst::Devel...

[Brad Bowman]

Octavian Rasnita wrote:
> From: "Brad Bowman" <list at bereft.net>> 
[..]
>>>>>> YAML is hard to understand for a blind developer because if he 
>>>>>> arrows up or down the text, he hears the current line spoken,
>>>>>> but he doesn't know how many spaces is that line indented. YAML
>>>>>> is useful only visually, but not all the programmers can see, 
>>>>>> so from this point of view, other configuration modules are
>>>>>> better.
>>>>>>
>> [..]
>>>> It is also possible to hear the number of spaces when using a voice
>>>> synthesizer, but it is not very friendly to use a language like
>>>> Python. The languages like perl, Java or C# that use blocks
>>>> enclosed between { and } are much more friendly.
 >>
>> YAML, the format, supports "flow" style collections which
>> use {} and [], as JSON does.  
>>
>>  http://yaml.org/spec/1.2/#id2589867
>>
>> I don't think Perl's YAML modules support emitting in this style yet,
>> although you may be able to hand-write YAML this way.
>>
>>
> The problem is that if another person uses yaml, he probably won't use that
> style, so if a blind programmer would need to read it later, it would be
> hard to understand it. 

I had hoped that you could inter-convert between flow and block styles
using existing tools but was only able to Load YAML and save to
YAML compatible JSON.  (This may be preferable for use with a screen reader).

Ideally, you could convert to flow style without losing comments or ordering
information that tends to be discarded by the full serialize/deserialize
round-trip.

I asked on the yaml-core about this and they confirmed that while YAML
can be represented entirely in flow style, the current implementations
have only patchy support for it, but that it shouldn't be too hard for
them to add.

> If Catalyst recommends another type of configuration
> file, that new type has more chances to be used more and more in the new
> apps.

Sure.  Hopefully the YAML tools will catch up with the spec and provide
screen-reader friendly options for other YAML you may encounter,

Brad

-- 
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