DiaRenderScript plug-in (was Re: applying custom styles to diagrams)

[Hans Breuer <hans breuer org>]

At 11.11.2010 15:39, niklas | brueckenschlaeger wrote:
> I just stumbled across the DiaRenderScript plug-in in svn. That seems
> rather useful! I have a few questions about it:
> 1) Why doesn't the plug-in get installed correctly w/ make install?
>     (gets compiled and ends up in plug-ins/drs/.libs, but not in
>      $PREFIX/lib/dia, copying it there it works though)
Because it is still considered experimental and unfinished and I don't want 
to maintain any file format compatibility just yet. More information from 
the commit log, e.g.:

http://git.gnome.org/browse/dia/commit/?id=b252c6ffff780c96fbd1d0a3fc81938719732024

> 2) the output seems to contain both the diagram structure (in dia
>     format I guess, but not namespaced)
I'm not sure what you mean with "diagram structure", but there are only 
overlaps by coincidence and for property serialization. The latter due to 
sharing implmentation, but not 100%, e.g. the bezier serialization is 
different and more capable than with the Dia standard format.

>     and the rendering information,
>     which is exactly what I need, but the DTD doesn't say anything about
>     properties / attributes. Is that valid?
This is boon and bane of how property serialization implmentation is no 
central management of property details, but every object plug-in can extend 
the format specification with it's needs.
Manually maintaining a DTD does not look reasonable to me and up until now 
I never got around to autonmatically generate is with a dedicated plug-in.

> 3) The dtd uri http://projects.gnome.org/dia/dia-render-script.dtd gives
>     404, not so important but spits out lots of warnings from xsltproc
Yeah, intentionally. The format is not finalized or released so the DTD 
(currently available at 
http://git.gnome.org/browse/dia/tree/plug-ins/drs/dia-render-script.dtd) 
will change without notice or compatibility concerns.

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