If an 8-year-old can learn HTML, with dozens of different tags and formatting things, surely an adult can learn an XML schema with as many tags as you have configuration options.. *shrug*. I would present them with a sample and see how easily they learn it. Your XML parser should inform them of errors in the XML file as well as early in the process as you can (perhaps a separate process from your application that checks the syntax of the file, which they can run after each change they make).

In addition, there are lots of simple XML editors on the market now too, complete with nice GUI front-ends, and IE 5 does a pretty good job of displaying it.

I personally don't think learning XML is going to be your biggest hurdle, but obviously you know the users better than I do, so it's your call... Good luck though.

In reply to RE: RE: (2) Cross-platform config file parsing (XML::Simple looks good, but...) by Fastolfe
in thread Cross-platform config file parsing by ybiC

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.