[BRLTTY] Braille tables versus contraction tables.

[Jason White]

On Thu, May 01, 2008 at 07:03:09AM -0400, Dave Mielke wrote:
 
> >The cost would be negligible CPU usage in writing and parsing the text file.
> 
> And in increased binary size, but, as stated in an earlier post, I really don't 
> think we're still in the days of having to work overtime to keep it small.

It should be possible to share some of the code with the /etc/brltty.conf
processing. In fact, ideally, the preferences would just be included as a
subset of the brltty.conf format: preference values specified per user would
override those in the global configuration file. This isn't an unusual
arrangement.

The other cost that I didn't mention would be that of keeping the code which
handles the old format around, at least for a number of releases, to prevent
complaints about backward-incompatibility. Having to re-create one's BRLTTY
preferences after a new release wouldn't be a problem for me, but I can
imagine that some users might be very annoyed at the prospect, or confused it
if happened unexpectedly after a new install - although there is always the
possibility of a migration script.

In the end, it's a question of whether this is worth doing. By itself, perhaps
it isn't, but the idea of a single unified configuration format deserves
further discussion.