[lazarus] Regarding "Proting the form editor"

[Kevin Berry]

Hi Shane,

I hope you don't mind me sharing my opinions seeing as
though I'm not doing any coding yet...

--- Shane Miller <SMiller1 at stvgb.org> wrote:
> Sam, 
> I believe the notepad, button, etc forms are working
> to a point that you could start converting the form
> editor.  We still have issues on the file we will be
> storing the form info in and what the format of it
> wil be.  I believe we are using XML but it's really
> never been finalized.  I feel starting with straight
> text would be fine for now but eventually would go
> to a binary or XML format.

Wouldn't it be a good idea to support the same format
as Delphi 5 - ie. Text.  The advantages of a plain
text format are that it is very easy to make manual
changes using any external tools.  I've found this
feature of Delphi 5 very good.  Of course earlier
versions of Delphi (1-4) used a binary format and
therefore you couldn't use external tools to edit the
DFM files, but you could still view them as text in
the IDE.  XML sounds intriguing though...  That may
work very well, but I'm in favour of "compatible"
formats to begin with.  The reason Inprise went with
text format after all this time is because it was
specially requested by third parties I believe...

Cheers,
Kevin.
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