[ODE] XML ODE Data Interchange Format

Tue Mar 9 12:53:16 MST 2004

On Tue, 2004-03-09 at 12:04, Martin Wirth wrote:
> hi guys,
> 
> i really support the effort on creating XODE. i also think that the spec
> that William wrote is a good starting point. 

thank you.

>
> just a few suggestions of more
> or less cosmetic nature.
> http://www.sector2.de/download/xode_sample1.xml
> these are rather layout-related, i didn't have the time to look into how
> natural the format works with the ode internal data representation.
> again, very nice effort, imo.

Many of your suggestions have been taken into account by revision 04,
please tell me what you think of the changes and if these are what you
were expecting.

regarding your comment about lowStop and suspensionERP values - they
will definitely be there before the final version.  All ODE attributes
will be represented in the spec.  I just want to make sure we are in
agreeance on the overall layout before I add them all in.

I'd like to address your comment regarding extensions (from that linked
xml file):

                     i really see a problem with the extension
		element. i don't think it is needed to 
		have an extension mechanism in the spec as people
		can add their own elements wherever they want
		without causing the document to be dtd/xsd invalid.

		so if you put the ext/extension in the spec, you'd 
		also have to go into the specifics of what is con-
		tained in the extension tag. if you don't, you say
		"there's a tag.. with something in it." you can
		leave out the extension tag spec aswell then.

		if you allow an ext with a couple of contained
		extension elements then you could only use this
		information for statistics on the file. again,
		the spec on ext/extension wouldn't be too useful
		for third party devs.

		just my two cents on this.

Can people add their own elements without breaking the dtd/xsd?  I
thought that adding elements on a whim is exactly what would cause it to
be invalid.

Every Collection and ODE Object can have an "<ext>" tag.  Any well
formed XML structure will be accepted in that tag (by the to be created
dtd/xsd).  Without a designated <ext> tag, we'd have to allow _any_ tag
anywhere which would mean people could put a world in a geom or a tag
"foo" into a geom for want of a better example.  I guess that's like
saying you could put a "<html>" tag within a "<p>" tag in an xhtml
document.

The really nice thing about a common <ext> tag is that even parsers
which do not understand a particular extension can still preserve its
data.  Also, if a third party developer doesn't give a rats about a
particular extension - then they can ignore it totally.

Thanks for your comments,

Will.

-- 
William Denniss - will@ http://tanksoftware.com/