Comment Re:For a better file format (Score 1) 390
Structured text formats with standard parsers and writer like XML are arguably smarter than than a dumb
Structured text formats with standard parsers and writer like XML are arguably smarter than than a dumb
Frankly, I think that plain text is a terrible format for source code. It unites content and presentation instead of separating them. I'd much more prefer to use a system similar to HTML/CSS where one file dictates the actual code, and the other part how I want to look at it. This way, I can have a custom CSS that uses tabs and places opening curly brackets on a new line, and my coworker can have a CSS that uses spaces and puts the curly brackets at the end of a line.
Source code formats could furthermore be in a hierarchical XML structure, making loops child nodes of functions which are child nodes of class nodes. This would save all the guesswork and black magic that currently goes into syntax highlighting and code folding.
No more will my SVN logs and diffs be messed up by a supid text editor insisting on changing all line feeds. No longer will there be any discussions about code formatting guidelines.
This is 2010, why are we sill saving code in dumb text files like in 1960?
Where there's a will, there's a relative.