[josm-dev] control characters in config file

Dirk Stöcker openstreetmap at dstoecker.de
Wed Dec 29 15:18:59 GMT 2010


On Wed, 29 Dec 2010, Alan Mintz wrote:

>> Yes. I used 0x1E (and yes, I know my standards), as semicolon had lots of 
>> troubles, same with comma and everthing else. E.G. the commit comments use 
>> all of these characters. Previously it has been ';' as well as ',' and some 
>> forms of §.
>
> I don't mind which character is used - it's just that it's inconsistent 
> within the file (all of the above are still in use), and undocumented for the 
> user. I've had to dig into source to find it.

The workarounds have been removed some months ago. There should be nothing 
left. If there is, tell where and file a bug-report.

And this will remain undocumented, as this is a internal file format, 
which a user must not change.

>> The advanced preferences allow to enter fields as well. Generally directly 
>> editing the josm config-file is not a recommendable thing anyway and if the 
>> person doing so cannot cope with the 0x1E, then he should use the JOSM GUI 
>> interface.
>
> That doesn't solve it. Some values have no way to enter them other than the 
> "Advanced Preferences" editor. Could we have meta-data somewhere that 
> provides a popup when you mouse-over the field in that editor, to tell you 
> what the separator is, for the cases where there are either none or one value 
> there and it's not obvious?

What are you talking about? As I told already the advanced preferences 
allow you to enter collection values. Simply select value and press edit.

There is no need to have meta-information or detection of a separator, as 
there is no separator except the 0x1E.

There may be old-style code in the software which does not use the 
collection functionality and instead creates own strings. These cases 
should be fixed. For the JOSM core these are no collections, but plain strings.

Ciao
-- 
http://www.dstoecker.eu/ (PGP key available)


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