[Info-vax] Logical names, was: Re: Command Procedure Pipe output to a variable

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 10/9/2021 8:03 PM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> Logical names are a very limited means of manifesting those settings 
> into the apps too, as your character-encoding is limited. Having an API 
> to access preferences also gives you options that don't exist with the 
> logical name APIs such as wildcards. (Well, other than invoking SHOW 
> LOGICAL and parsing the results of course, and which is unsupported.) 
> And with logical names as the manifestation, you can be building a 
> parser in the apps for what should be considered untrusted data.
> 
> Existing examples of preferences files include X and its preferences 
> file processing, various app-specific examples present within OpenVMS, 
> and examples from other platforms. 
> https://developer.apple.com/documentation/foundation/preferences/
> 
> Persistent storage of the settings can be file-based, or in LDAP. For 
> file-based persistence, you'll probably then be looking at JSON, YAML, 
> maybe Protocol Buffers, maybe (probably not) XML, etc. 
> https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/overview Or you can 
> stuff it all into app-maintained fields within a punched card structure 
> in an RMS file, of course.

protobuf is a binary format so not likely.

XML is still widely used for this: .NET app config,
Java preferences etc..

Arne