[Twisted-Python] Twisted Plugins - Implementation Discussion

[Glyph Lefkowitz]

On Apr 7, 2011, at 1:55 AM, Stephen Thorne wrote:

> On 2011-04-07, Glyph Lefkowitz wrote:
>> 
>> On Apr 7, 2011, at 1:08 AM, Tim Allen wrote:
>> 
>>> Well, the nice thing about ConfigParser is that it's in the stdlib, and
>>> people already know how to create them, and rolling
>>> yet-another-config-file-format seems crazy in this day and age.
>> 
>> My point was really that people think they know how to create these,
>> but actually they don't.  Pop quiz, hot shot: what is the quoting rule
>> to put a linebreak with preserved trailing whitespace into a value in
>> a .ini file?  Into a key?
> 
> Reality check. This are the plugins that are currently shipped:
> 
>    ftp              An FTP server.
>    telnet           A simple, telnet-based remote debugging service.
>    socks            A SOCKSv4 proxy service.
>    manhole-old      An interactive remote debugger service.
>    portforward      A simple port-forwarder.
>    web              A general-purpose web server which can serve from a
>                     filesystem or application resource.
>    inetd            An inetd(8) replacement.
>    news             A news server.
>    xmpp-router      An XMPP Router server
>    words            A modern words server
>    dns              A domain name server.
>    mail             An email service
>    manhole          An interactive remote debugger service accessible via
>                     telnet and ssh and providing syntax coloring and basic line
>                     editing functionality.
>    conch            A Conch SSH service.
>    procmon          A process watchdog / supervisor
> 
> Why do we care about complex quoting and linebreaks for descriptions? If
> you can't remember, just keep typing and let it get wrapped.

None of those descriptions have non-ASCII characters in there either, but that doesn't mean I want to standardize on a format where I can't figure out how to type them.  I would like to provide more flexibility with a simpler API, not less flexibility and more complexity.