[GRASS-dev] NVIZ state file format (was GRASS6.3 on Windows, nviz)

[Michael Barton]

On 8/28/07 12:09 PM, "Dylan Beaudette" <dylan.beaudette at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tuesday 28 August 2007 11:43, Michael Barton wrote:
>> AFAICT, the current situation is that NVIZ will not properly read the state
>> file that it writes. To 'fix' it to read it with the current file format
>> and code approach will result in an incomplete 'fix' in that it still won't
>> read parts of the state file properly.
>> 
>> XML is a potentially good idea, but requires an external library AND I
>> don't know XML well enough to implement this.
> 
> My 2 cents here. If we are using XML in other parts of GRASS (via external
> parsing libs) I think that it would be good to standardize on some flavor of
> XML for any misc. things like the NVIZ state file. XML is simple to read in a
> text editor, simple to parse with external tools, and simple to read/write
> with the appropriate libs.
> 
snip snip ...
> 
> thats the kicker... I do not know enough about XML in a C environment to do
> this / and a MS thesis is looming over my head right now... Sorry!
> 

Indeed! Summer is over and my time is short too.

Unless someone that does have expertise in XML and time to do it is out
there, I propose to fix this with minimal changes in the current, simple
ascii state file for the upcoming 6.3 release.

We should rethink this for any subsequent releases, including 7. I don't
want to keep saying that we'll do it better in wxPython, but there are
available xml parsers there (e.g., SAX) that would make this easier. But
again, it will depend on available expertise.

Michael

__________________________________________
Michael Barton, Professor of Anthropology
Director of Graduate Studies
School of Human Evolution & Social Change
Center for Social Dynamics & Complexity
Arizona State University

phone: 480-965-6213
fax: 480-965-7671
www: http://www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton