awk, site files, etc

[Chris W Skelly]

Michael makes the suggestion that:

> One final thought on the site file format discussion: why not add a tag
> to each field, i.e.
> 
> north=83401.65|east=4578.9|elevation=1638.0|label=burial_mound  etc.?
> 
> Then sites programs could parse each line in the file and extract
> *whatever* data they need.  Users building site lists could put any and
> all data they want into the site description.

ok, but does this improve functionality given that two sites files

83401.65|4578.9|1638.0 and 83401.65|4578.9|burial_mound

accomplish the same thing? If you have to add tags to all columns
how much more complicated will you need to make the file header (he
says thinking aloud)? Actually, if you had two extra lines in the
header part of the sites file:

tags=on
north|east|elevation|site_feature

and if tags=off or the ommission of a tags=on/off line indicated
that the sites file was to be treated as per the norm we might have
the best of both worlds...

chris