On Sat, Aug 06, 2016 at 10:39:14AM +0200, Edward Bartolo wrote:
> In the case of simple parsing requirements, I prefer to have the
> program itself do the parsing instead of relying on an external
> parser. This remove the extra dependency on the parser.
>
> I would also like to comment on the text file format in which menus
> and menu trees will be stored. If I were to code the project myself I
> would opt to avoid using a nested format to mimic a tree structure.
> Instead lines defining tree-nodes would be used as I described
> earlier.
>
> placement="main menu/sub-menu1/next-sub-menu1"
>
> This neatly describes tree nodes without using a nested format. It
> also allows menu items to be placed anywhere in the file which is an
> advantage.

The simplest way I know of to represent a tree of menus is to use the
file system, raher than inventing a new file system within a file.

Liinux has a decent file system. It has a decent set of tools for
manageing them. Its file systems even have mechanisms for storing many
small files. It even has symbolic links, that can be see-also's.

I really don't see that the problem of storing menus requires further
invention.

You could even start each menu with a #! line identifyng the
menu-managing program that's supposed to be used to interpret it.

Please keep things simple.

-- hendrik