> I don't want to sound like some kind of intellectual fascist, but I just can't

> accept "dumbing down" a system because the la(z)yman doesn't care to

> learn it's proper use.

I can share your sentiment with this as it's a struggle I have on a daily basis

with these developers :)

How about this argument:

The target declaration files are the human readable/writeable way of constructing

a dependency graph. The graph itself is and should be nothing but data; there

is no place for logic inside the graph. While conditional properties and

<conditional> properties can be considred logic, I would still argue that it's still

a piece of data.

From experience, it's usually best to separate your data from your logic as it scales

really well.