[Lazarus] Why was XML format chosen for storing settings in Lazarus IDE?

[Graeme Geldenhuys]

On 18/06/2010, Henry Vermaak  wrote:
> often.  Why are you even complaining about this?  Another storm in a
> teacup?

At this point, mostly out of curiosity.  :)

On the other hand, there is no clear documentation about this for
developers that would like to extend Lazarus IDE. For example, I wrote
a few IDE add-ons over the years, and in all cases I simply followed
the crowd blindly (due to lack of docs) and created yet more .xml
files (one for each extension).  My preference would have been INI
files because they are easier to use, and the settings stored was very
simple.

My last add-on was semi-rejected (or simply hanging in limo) mostly
because I created yet another xml file (but this time for good reasons
- a design/shared usage choice), and because I didn't use one of the
many ways (apparently some are preferred above others) in Lazarus IDE
code to read/write from such xml files.

So if there was some logical reason for using xml, and a clear-cut
reason why it was chosen and what exact method must be used to
read/write them, then I would like to document that somewhere in the
wiki for other Lazarus add-on developers.


-- 
Regards,
  - Graeme -


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