[Scribus] Re: XML format used in Scribus

[David Boddie]

On Mon, 16 May 2005 11:16:15, Craig Ringer wrote:

> What I was referring to was the ability to use XML transoformations,
> _outside_ of scribus, to operate on Scribus's XML document format. All
> sorts of things would be possible that way, so long as the new format
> still validated, and it'd be a possible avenue for writing document
> "downgraders" to permit Scribus 1.(x-1) to open Scribus 1.x documents.
> That wouldn't work for 1.2.x -> 1.3.x/1.4.x though, as the current 1.2.x
> format (still used in 1.3.x until the new one is ready) is not XML
> processor friendly.

There are are couple of problems with the current format that I encountered
when writing a convertor, but you may well be aware of them already:

 1. The use of a <SCRIBUSUTF8> element as both a document element and a
    character set declaration makes it awkward to create files with various
    XML handling libraries. With version 1.2.1, the presence of a
    declaration like <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> will prevent
    Scribus from recognising the file.

 2. The format appears to use element attributes rather heavily, and I was
    surprised to see that text is encoded in CH attributes rather than,
    say, CDATA sections.

Scribus also had problems with page numbering because I didn't realise that
the PAGE element's NUM attribute _must_ start at zero. Starting at NUM="1"
caused a segfault. :-/

It would be good to see how the new format is developing. Is there a page
on the Wiki for it?

David