Re: XML

[John Edstrom <edstrom teleport com>]

On Fri, Jan 31, 2003 at 11:40:24PM -0600, Lars Clausen wrote:
> On Fri, 31 Jan 2003, John Edstrom wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I'm new to Dia.  I like that it's output is ( can be ) in xml.  What
> > I'm wondering is, is there a DTD or a fairly detailed description of
> > the elements, their allowed attributes, how namespaces are used, etc.?
> > I didn't see such a document while I was poking around on the site &
> > the twiki XML topic is unbegun.
>
> The DTD is in the doc directory of the tarball.  I don't think we have a
> more detailed description around.


I got my dia as a binary .rpm and the DTD didn't come with it.  I just
DLed the source and the DTDs are there. Thanks.


> > I'm thinking of spitting out some data as digraphs.  I looked at the
> > xml output from simple graphs and think that I can figure it all out,
> > but I'd rather spare myself the learning experience.
>
> Have you looked at the various programs available in the Links section of
> the webpage?

Yes, but only briefly.  I"m still just casing the joint at this point.
AutoDia is the closest that I've seen to what I want, but I'm not
really interested in UML.

Right now I'm building automatons which can get pretty complex.
Layout is my main concern, more than rendering or manipulation.  I use
the perl Graph::Directed module which, happily enough, writes xml
and/or 'dot' files ( from the graphviz package).  With the right
arguments dot will figure out a reasonably well-balanced layout for
the digraph and dump the coordinates of the nodes and edges.  I figure
it shouldn't be too difficult to convert or rescale the dot-calculated
coordinates into dia coordinates which would give me a better renderer
of the same graph.  If that's the case then my strategy is to convert
from dot >>-> ( xml | xsl ) >>-> dia.xml.


> -Lars


-- 
John Edstrom