Alan McKinnon wrote: >> The only way to be sure of that is to write your own replacement for HAL. >> ;) >> > > That might not be a bad idea.... > > I never agreed with the implementation of hal. An abstract layer sounds good, > but why must it abstract ALL hardware? Most software already knows what type > of devices it is going to use, so that software should either do it's own > abstraction, or a utility library should do it, but be limited to what > devices > it deals with. > > Most devices fall into one of two groups: storage and I/O. Auto-mounters do > not care about your keyboard, whereas X needs to know about your monitor, > card, keyboard, mouse. Why does hal try and abstract both? Seems silly to me. > > One could also argue that the developer's state of mind is reflected in the > chosen method of configuration - xml files. This just defies all > understanding. Apart from the fact that real-world xml is almost unreadable, > the conditions that make xml useful are simply not present in hal... > > xml works well when you have system A talking to system B and neither A nor B > (nor user C) know in advance exactly what the other is. They might not even > know much about the data schema being used, so that metadata is in the xml. > This is so completely not the case with hal on a local machine, that it > defies > description why the dev thought it might be useful.
I can't argue with any of that, which is why I decided to quote it in full - it's worth repeating. It seems xml is the fashion with certain programmers. Totally unnecessary. :( Be lucky, Neil http://www.neiljw.com
