kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 12/7/2013 10:51 AM, Lorenzo Marcantonio wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 07, 2013 at 03:56:48PM +0200, Povilas Kanapickas wrote:
>> P.S. Just out of interest, could someone give a two sentence overview
>> over why custom, non XML/JSON/etc. format has been chosen for various
>> serializers in KiCad? I've tried to search in the email archives but the
>> decision and arguments for it seem to be burried sufficiently deep
>> enough :-)
> 
> Actually is not custom is simply a sexp... predating XML by about...
> more or less 30 years :D
> 
> AFAIK it was chosen because a) they liked it and b) it's pretty the same
> than the one used by SPECCTRA so there was already stuff done for it.
> 

c) Much easier to read than XML.

d) Less verbose which means smaller in size which cuts down on the
parsing time.

The lead developers and most of the discussion on the mailing list
seemed to agree with the fundamental concept that the s-expression
format is more readable than any mark up language.  If you looked at the
.kicad_pcb and .kicad_mod files, you should be able to understand them
for the most part without documentation.