Re: XML file format - Linux vs Windows

[Hans Breuer <hans breuer org>]

At 11:03 17.06.02 -0300, Ian Britten wrote:
> Hi all,
> Should I expect the (uncompressed) XML file from Dia to be the same on
> Linux versus Windows?  (It doesn't seem to be... :-(
>
> We're using Dia on multiple platforms (Instead of Visio! ;-), and we maintain
> the XML save files as uncompressed ASCII in a CVS repository.  Aside from
> some dos/unix newline problems, this has worked out well to date (0.88.1).
>
> However, some of my Windows developers have tried upgrading to the newest
> version of Dia (0.90).  With this new version, the XML file is dramatically
> different(*) from previous versions, and from 0.90 on Linux.
This isn't at all an issue of Linux versus Windoze, but of using
libxml1 (which does pretty whitespace formatting) and libxml2
which does not anymore, by default. To reenable it with libxml2
you need to put
        pretty_formated_xml=true
in your diarc

> [ (*) By different, I mean whitespace, etc.  The files still work correctly ]
>
> All this whitespace difference kindof defeats the purpose of being able to
> store incremental changes in CVS  :-(
And the different fonts and resulting bounding box size mismatches
aren't producing irrelevant changes ?

> So, I guess my question is - Is it a goal of Dia to have the same XML file
> irregardless of platform?  (If it's not, *could* it be - Please?)
Nope (I'm not sure if this wouldn't be an impossible goal)

> Is this perhaps just something different between the builds that could be
> configured, or is it a more fundamental problem?
see above. The real approach would be a graphical diff
based on dia's interpretation of two xml files - wouldn't it ?
[Don't get me wrong, I don't plan to write such]

        Hans
-------- Hans "at" Breuer "dot" Org -----------
Tell me what you need, and I'll tell you how to 
get along without it.                -- Dilbert