Re: libXO-ification - Why - and is it a symptom of deeper issues?

Garrett Cooper <yaneurabeya_at_gmail.com> wrote:
> We lack a [dtd/json] spec for tools, so programming for xo'ification
> doesn't seems like the best idea in the world to me from a end-user
> sysadmin/developer perspective.

A dtd etc is good for sure, and we (Juniper) do have them, as well as
ui-police to help ensure things go smoothly - even that doesn't catch
everything.
But all that is a layer above something like libxo - which is just the
mechanism.
All that is fundamentally required to obtain a reasonable result is
consistent use of verbs and nouns.

> I could just as easily use standard tools like awk, grep, sed, and
> more advanced languages like perl or Python to parse output, and

If you are parsing plain text output - that is all the data you have
and it is a small subset of what the app knows.

XML and HTML allow the app to provide lots of ancilliary/meta data
that is invaluable in doing clever things with the data.
Eg. by simply marking something as hostname/ipaddr the ui can hook in
pulldown menus to let you do things with that info.
I don't know if we've released anything I can point you at easily
but 5 minutes would suffice to make a believer of you ;-)

BTW libifying apps is a nice thing too, but does not eliminate the need
to do all the exact same UI work - just changes where you do it, since
the libraries themselves would need to be XO'ified to be useful.