[openbeos] Re: resource files, application signatures, and icons

Ingo Weinhold <bonefish@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> OK, just to make sure, that I understand you correctly. When you want 
> to
> add resources to an application being part of the OBOS build, you 
> launch
> the QuickRes replacement, create new resources, save them to an XML
> file and tell the build system, that said file contains the resources 
> for
> your application. When building the resources tool is invoked in 
> command
> line mode to convert the XML file into a resources file which is 
> finally
> added to the application.

Right, exactly how it is currently done with the beres .rdef files. The 
QuickRes replacement should be able to read/write those XML files 
directly.

> For the MIME database the process is similar: With FileTypes 
> (actually I
> would find it a bit confusing to use FileTypes, as it edits the 
> running
> system's MIME database) you create an XML file per MIME type to be
> contained in the database and, when building, the tool converts them 
> into
> the standard attribute-only format.
> Correct?

Yes, that's what I meant... perhaps we should build a special version 
of FileTypes to be retargetable (or perhaps via commandline arguments), 
so that we won't mix the two things - or we also should add support for 
the ability to read/write the XML format directly, too, although it 
certainly has a lower priority there (as no user would need this, OTOH 
QuickRes would be very useful for everyone).

> > BTW I would not want to create the current beres/deres style 
> > resource
> > files manually either, if avoidable (which it is) :-)
> I haven't worked with these tools yet, but from quick glances on such
> resource files, I have to agree, that the format seems to have some
> potential for improvement. :-P

Well, it's not so bad, but it's the kind of file I like to machine 
generate, and maybe edit it manually afterwards.

> However, the situation is, that we currently have two formats for
> resources: binary resource files and the textual beres format. The 
> former
> is the one that is used in the build. The latter is the only textual
> alternative for now,  which I've, BTW, been asked to add build system
> support for. I'm absolutely unemotional concerning the matter and 
> would
> also be happy with a yet-to-be-designed XML format. Nevertheless it 
> would
> be nice, if we could decide for with which one want to go in the near
> future. E.g. if XML makes the race, it wouldn't make much sense to 
> add
> support for beres files now.

Although we could make the use of beres/deres completely the same for 
the build process (I would also want to keep the .rdef suffix), we 
should probably not do this before we have a single solution for that 
problem.

IMO the best reason to use XML here is that we wouldn't need to write a 
parser for it, but we would need to write one if we'd reproduce the 
beres format.

Adios...
   Axel.

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