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Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2000 14:21:46 +1100
To: ant-dev@jakarta.apache.org
From: Peter Donald <donaldp@apache.org>
Subject: Re: From attributes to elements and other concerns
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At 07:10  22/11/00 -0800, you wrote:
>Interesting info. In all seriousness (I'm not being smug), why do you think
>"they" think that 
>
>      More Elements -> Harder
>but
>      More Attributes -> Easier
>
>? Is is a visual layout issue (clumping related information close
>together), or is it the difficulty of understanding hierarchical data? As a
>non-non-technical person, I actually find the nested elements approach much
>easier to read. But as has been pointed out here, there has been a goal
>stated at some point that Ant should be accessible to non-techies as well
>as techies.

I think it is the level of abstraction. The more abstract/generic the tasks
become the more they tend to have sub-elements. The more abstract the task
is then the more difficult it is to understand.

The main thing they complained about was directory copying. ie Compare

<copydir src"foo" dest="bar" />

and

<copy todir="bar">
  <fileset dir="foo" />
</copy>


The 1st one is much more readable but less "extendable". With second you
can do all sorts of fancy fileset operations and maybe do file mapping in
future (or now ???). In this case I actually prefer the first case but in
most cases I prefer the deeper elements approach. Anyways something to
think about ;)


Cheers,

Pete

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