Re: Dia & Schemas/DTDs

[Andrew S Halper <ashalper acm org>]

On 2002.11.06 22:40 James K. Lowden wrote:
> On 06 Nov 2002 12:26:43 -0600, Lars Clausen <lrclause@cs.uiuc.edu> wrote:
> > On Wed, 6 Nov 2002, Durk Strooisma wrote:
> > > 
> > > We noticed that Dia doens't make use of DTDs or XML Schemas (for
> > > example to validate Dia XML documents). Even correct DTDs or XML
> > > Schemas aren't provided, which would be handy to validate Dia XML
> > > documents within XML authoring tools.
> >
> > I don't know enough about DTDs and XML Schemas to judge whether this is
> > a useful thing.  We do have DTDs, but they're not used by Dia.
> 
> Durk makes a good point.  It would be useful, and it wouldn't be easy for
> an outsider to contribute.  Forgive me if I'm belaboring the obvious.  
> 
> If Dia relied on its DTD to validate a file prior to/while loading it,
> then the DTD would be assured of being a good measure of a good Dia file.

Not that I know much about stylesheet validation either, but isn't it fairly computationally expensive, and thus typically only done as a "sanity check" apart from the application?

> That would give non-Dia programs a benchmark for creating Dia files.  And
> it would assist non-Dia programs in interpreting Dia files.  (BTW, do I

I agree that formalizing a stylesheet validation would probably be a good thing.  I have a hacky Perl script right now that writes a Dia file from a data dictionary, and stylesheet validation would help pinpoint errors in the Dia file caused by errors in my Perl code.

Andy