Re: a standard for diagram document format

["Diego Jacobi" <jacobidiego gmail com>]

Ok, i have been able to see the xml.

But check for this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<dia:diagram xmlns:dia="http://www.lysator.liu.se/~alla/dia/">
  <dia:diagramdata>

The page mentioned redirects to the old dia page, and the old dia page redirects to the new one.

The dia that i have usaed is one of the sample, but resaving it as an uncompressed xml havent changed the URL.

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I think that it will be better in the future to adopt a format like ODT, i mean:

- A .dia file should be a tar.gz file or LZMA. (like ODT)
- There should be multiple folders on it, the main one called diagram and maybe also a "thumbnail" and an "attached" for attached objects like pictures.
- Inside the diagram folder should be placed all the individual shapes
- The main shape should be called "main.shape.xml" and this is the starting file that the program should open.
- Each shape describe the connections between other shapes or basic SVG figures like lines, squares, circles, etc. and the external connection points.
- Each object (shape instance) should have (like in a DOM) a shapename or class, a unique id and childs (lines, circles, squares, other shapes, etc.).
- Each object (shape instance) should have global properties (for the entire sheet) and individual properties (for overwriting properties per object), maybe both can be done with a CSS file.
- The DOM and CSS should be available for scripted languages to change some properties dinamically.
- Shapes should have some on-mouse-over and on-clic events support, for any script to use it.
- Shapes should have some functionality to have a real word measured size, a fixed scale. (It could be just a property).

Also of course it have to be implemented as a widget-viewer and a model (like in GtkTreeView).

Then multiple programs can use the same widget to draw specific kind of diagrams.

I will like to see some day a LabView clone (visual programming) and a good Electronic Schematics/PCB software using it, maybe also an AutoCAD clone, see Abiword/OOo using it to draws its lines over the paper, etc.

But maybe is too much work to do and wont ever be available. :(

2008/6/12 Maciej Jaros <egil wp pl>:

Dnia 2008-06-12 01:47 osoba przedstawiająca się jako Diego Jacobi napisała:

Where is the info describing the dia format?

It is the same as a shape?

It would be nice, the shape being the same thing as a diagram.

diagram is made out of shapes, but dia file doesn't contain shape definitions... Hm... Come to think of it, maybe if the used shapes would be zipped with the main file it could already be considered a standard diagram file (main+shape+SVG). Including used shapes would be needed to make diagrams readable by any software knowing the standard...

Regards,
Nux.

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