[Typo3-dev] PHP problem revived

[Kasper Skårhøj]

My note to this discussion after reading it all:


Using XML for flexforms and using array2xml/xml2array for conversion was chosen because:

- close to internal structure in arrays (easy for developers)
- can be speeded up when tools are around (in PHP5?) (still need hooks in core if people want to select alternative en/decoding of the XML. Maybe a service. later...)
- Can be schematized (with recent changes) into DTD (for specific implementations)

- Writing TCA as XML? Maybe a future option (with fast tools! Very important!)
- Writing TS as XML? A case study showed that defining the same information in XML would bloat code with 100% overhead. Search for the idea "TSML" (by me) on the list. Anyways, it could be made an *option* later. Still, it wouldn't solve the main problem for people; the semantics of TS. I don't think many have trouble with the syntax actually.

In the end:
We have to consider what we gain (better architecture, "buzzword compliance", unified concepts..) to what we loose (spending tons of time for conversion, loosing backwards compatibility, having to rewrite tons of documentation to be correct...)

- kasper