Re: Dia-list digest, Vol 1 #802 - 4 msgs



On Mon, 31 Mar 2003 dia-list-request gnome org wrote:

My take on the XML vs. SVG issue: I'd need to see very good reasons to
change our file format.  XML has worked well so far, there's many documents
out there in our current format, and there are many programs that work on
our current format.  If it ain't broke, don't fix it -- especially if it's
holding up the building.

Actually something that would work very well would be stylesheets - you
could specify things like, colours, fonts, etc without breaking the
current xml.

This would prove very helpful indeed I believe and stick to a nice
seperation of content and presentation (something that seems very alien to
some XML writers *cough*IBM,argouml*cough* .

here is an example of why I dislike argouml's pgml so much :
=============================>
     <group name="Fig1.5"
         description="org.tigris.gef.presentation.FigGroup[40, 78, 146, 19]"
         fill="1"
         fillcolor="-1"
         stroke="1"
         strokecolor="-16777216"
    >
      <private>
      </private>

      <rectangle name="Fig1.5.0"
        x="40"
        y="78"
        width="146"
        height="19"
        fill="1"
        fillcolor="-1"
        stroke="1"
        strokecolor="-16777216"
      />
      <text name="Fig1.5.1"
        x="41"
        y="79"
        fill="0"
        fillcolor="-1"
        stroke="1"
        strokecolor="-16777216"
        font="Dialog"
        textsize="9"
      >get_foo(foo: char)</text>
    </group>

<============================

which is the equivilient to dia's :

============================>

        <dia:composite type="umlattribute">
          <dia:attribute name="name">
            <dia:string>#seqfeature_location_id#</dia:string>
          </dia:attribute>
          <dia:attribute name="type">
            <dia:string>##</dia:string>
          </dia:attribute>
          <dia:attribute name="value">
            <dia:string/>
          </dia:attribute>
          <dia:attribute name="visibility">
            <dia:enum val="2"/>
          </dia:attribute>
          <dia:attribute name="abstract">
            <dia:boolean val="false"/>
          </dia:attribute>
          <dia:attribute name="class_scope">
            <dia:boolean val="false"/>
          </dia:attribute>
        </dia:composite>

<===========================

A few things to note here :
- the dia XML tells me what I need to know
  - its an UML attribute in the dia namespace
  - its visibility, type, etc
- it is very easy to parse
- there isn't loads of graphical cruft about the shape of how the text
should be rendered
- in another piece of pgml there is even a <tag>foo="aaa" bar="bbb"</tag>
in the generalisation tag - yuck! yuck! yuck! why use name=value pairs in
XML for pities sake!

don't get me started on the XMI - its even less pleasent to deal with.

anyways - getting back to the point, if you want cool extra graphical
information in dia, xml use a) stylesheets (it works for HTML) b) a new
namespace that isn't required so 'legacy' xml works fine and legacy
applications can just ignore your graphics.

And besides, we have more important things to look at right now, like
improving the UI.  Now that 0.91 is out, we're open for patches.

c'mon c'mon!

where is auto-routing and 'smart lines' ?

I've only been waiting a couple of years for them ;)

(I am giving serious thought to eating^w writing some perl that does dia
layout based on dot or vcg)



-- 
Aaron J Trevena - Perl Hacker, Kung Fu Geek, Internet Consultant
AutoDia --- Automatic UML and HTML Specifications from Perl, C++
and Any Datasource with a Handler.     http://droogs.org/autodia




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