Re: File Formats (was SVG)

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Fri, 28 Mar 2003, Aaron Trevena wrote:

> Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2003 14:48:42 +0000 (GMT)
> From: Aaron Trevena <tj@droogs.org>
> Reply-To: dia-list@gnome.org
> To: dia-list@gnome.org
> Subject: File Formats (was SVG)
>
> I have to point out that I like the Dia XML as it is. After all compare
> the abundance of tols for creating and parsing it against those for
> argouml or kivio.

Well there are other factors, argouml is java based and kivio is not
entirely free which is distasteful to some.

What worries me is IBMs Eclipse and their XMI based EMF diagrams.
Now that IBM has bought Rational Rose, these standards are sure to become
even more important.
http://www.eclipse.org/emf/
http://www.rational.com/products/rose/

> Dia was using XML well before it became a key technology, and SVG was used
> significantly.
>
> Seperating presentation and information as Dia does now is a real plus -
> have a look at the adbomnination that is argouml's xml file format and you
> will see why you don't use something like SVG to represent UML and other
> diagrams.
>
> I thought it would be relatively easy to convert to/from Dia and Argouml,
> given they both use XML to represent UML Class diagrams - its the same
> information, the structures can't be that different, right? wrong!

"converting from one XML to another XML must be easy"
is only slighly less ludicrous than saying
"converting from one ASCII based file format to another"
especially if you have ever looked at any of the XML produced by MSWord or
Visio.

> On the subject of SVG and shapes tho - do we have a 'stencil' or set of
> shapes for databases yet? at the moment autodia is using class diagrams

You mean besides an Entity Relationship (ER) diagram?
I am sure if you are willing to do some work on Dia people will point you
in the right direction as to how best to do it.

do me a favour and check if this bug report is still valid, if so bump the
version number to 0.91
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=57386

- Alan