[Typo3-dev] Make configuration simple

[Michael Scharkow]

dan frost wrote:

> Anyway, my point was going to be: I think that the TYPO3 community are 
> guilt of a little too much "i know this, and i'm quick at it, therefore 
> it's best". TypoScript IS brief and neat. However, Python is more brief 
> than PHP (or Java), but Php is often nicer to do things in than Python 
> simple because the verbosity helps us read it.

Sorry, but I would argue exactly for the opposite: If you *can* validate 
the input properly, compactness is better than verbosity. I'm not 
starting a language war here, but how does verbosity help when you 
*manually* input your code. I can read and understand every Python 
example  in http://twistedmatrix.com/~glyph/rant/python-vs-java.html 
better than Java.

> Also, I think that the TYPO3 community needs to get away from the idea 
> that the interface should be the same as the language. Why not create 
> (or adopt) an XML-based configuration language which is used via a 
> graphical interface; or make the TypoScript syntax sit over a more 
> standard (ok, by standard I mean XML) language which can be checked by 
> existing tools (xmllint, dtds etc) for validity/correctness.

Okay, that's a whole different point. XML is certainly more readily 
processible with standard and language neutral tools. But I would not 
like to implement a clickable TS gui anyway, and as long as we have to 
type all the stuff ourselves, I'd rather not use XML.

The most flexible way would be to implement a TS <> XML <> WHATEVER 
toolchain, so that everybody can use his and her favourite markup language.

Greets,
Michael