Re: Coding Standards as an XML spec - Discussing the Avenues of Cooperation between Codesniffer, Beautifier, PhpDocumentor, and others in the PEAR
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Given this is all still in the brainstorming stage, we're still kind of accumulating thoughts and ideas without yet trying to rule out or refine any. An XML implementation is not necessarily the only direction where my thoughts have headed... it's just another idea to consider. Yet another is whether or not something like PEAR_Config could be used. How to lay out a spec is one part of the puzzle. Another part is how the tools could use a spec once laid out. Christian has a good angle on that, in that if we define a spec, it's not necessarily done in a way that the tools have to "read" it, and it's most certainly not that the spec suddenly becomes the entire ruleset for the tool. If the tools can already be "told" pieces of the spec via their own available input arguments or runtime configs, then the work involved for each tool is identifying those args/configs so we can document them. If this means some/all of the tool apps choose to move towards a common input arg set and/or runtime config set, then happy joy... if not, then at the minimum we're looking at documenting a "translation" matrix to show how each aspect of the spec is set in each tool... which could even possibly grow into a package app itself (PHP_CodeSpecToolTranslator ?). Again, this is still all brainstorming for more idea avenues... Keep the ideas coming, even the "limitations", "concerns", and "absurd" ideas... many times the exercise of shooting down an absurd idea can lead to a good idea that didn't come out on its own... CRB