[zeromq-dev] Devices and config files

[gonzalo diethelm]

> > Ok. Any pointers yet?
> 
> Here is a sketch.  http://rfc.zeromq.org/spec:4

That looks nice. I have never been too inclined to indentation-based
syntax, but it is very readable.

> > I have seen a couple on the mailing list. I seem to remember people
> > explicitly including the terminating zero so that they were asking
for a
> > specific topic and NOT a prefix.
> 
> Sure, but IMO that's more about semantics than encoding.  I.e.
> "subscribe to this string" as compared to "subscribe to this prefix".

Yes, but I wouldn't discount this need, at least not without getting
more feedback. And keep in mind the API explicitly declares the topics
to be binary strings.

> > I would think you want to specify the configuration (for a device,
> > endpoint, whatever) as a string that can be parsed. This string
could
> > come from a config file, a database, a broker, memory in the running
> > program, etc.
> 
> Yes, a string or stream of strings.  I have this horrid feeling we'll
> end up back with XML but having written hundreds of thousands of line
> of XML over the last years, I'd really like to find a simpler language
> that covers our needs.  Not just about less reliance on external
> parsers but also less verbosity.  Anyhow, ZPL is a sketch.

Please, not XML unless strictly necessary. We might even opt for
S-expressions (Lisp syntax), they have the same expressive power but are
a lot more readable (to me at least).

-- 
Gonzalo Diethelm