Re: [MiNT] Svar:Re: HRD's & RSC's

[Kåre Andersen <kareandersen@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 3:51 PM, Paul Wratt <paul.wratt@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 10:31 PM,  <KareAndersen@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Den 11. jan. 2010 22.09 skrev Paul Wratt <paul.wratt@gmail.com>:
>> <snip>
>>> Theoretically the resource source format could be defined as xml, or
>>> specifically as html+css style, which would assist in making the
>>> addition of scripting to HighWire a reality, even if the format were a
>>> subset
>>
>>
>> This caught my interest, so I googled a bit. Sounds like the BSDL describes
>> the problem - http://www2002.org/CDROM/alternate/334/
>> I don't think html+css would really work. You would need custom elements,
>> and the meta tag is just evil. XML + XSL however, could.
>>
>>
>>> That indicates that HighWire might be a good basis for a resource
>>> designer, as it already has the basis for an interpreter, and that
>>> resources in source form could then be previewed in any web browser,
>>> which in itself would allow a lot more people to design for the
>>> platform as a whole
>>
>> This I don't see... However, once a schema has been worked out, there are
>> plenty of tools available to work with XML and XSLT.
>>
> All  HTML, XML, and there style counterparts are subsets of sgml.
> Having cheaked Gentoo and WOW/BattleNet recently they are using xml.
> It may be more useful to look at an engine that can handle these, like
> a slim line WebKit, and get the html engine and js with it
>

Its like this: HTML can be defined in an XML schema (or rather, DTD).
XHTML is done like this. But XML can be used to model anything -
that's the whole point. You define your own tags and attributes. This
is what you can not do in HTML.

Personally I was using TinyXML a few years ago -
http://www.grinninglizard.com/tinyxml/ for scripting demo code (not on
Atari tho). Its fairly easy to get started with. There are plenty of
other free software alternatives as well. A C rather than C++ based
alternative is probably preferable (which, incidentally, reflects my
current personal taste well... :)

> xml to RSC as a definition would not be hard, even as HTML+css (even
> if it is only as ascii, not rendered), however the trick is RSC as
> binary

This is where the BSDL comes in - as a syntactic device for storing
binary data as markup, which then can be XSLT'ed into .RSC and .HRD
files. Probably also the other way around (The BSDL document claims
this is work in progress, but it seems to be about 8 years old).

> The other point is that there neds to be some updating done on the
> resource format, an extension at least, that can allow for a standard
> set of AES objects and in particular 32bit color widgets. XaAES is
> lacking in this department, and so anything new would help there
> before any coding was done.. something that can easily be extended
> into MyAES as well...

Once you start expanding it you may as well replace it for "pure
future" applications - and with the new computing power available (as
in, faster than the 8mhz ST) parsing a bit of XML is fast enough to be
used directly. So, defining a standard like this may actually have
several uses.

> BTW, as a temp solution, something like python could be used to do xml
> and xsl to rsc binary... there is a new package available from Mikro
> that works natively..

Indeed, Python is probably a good tool for the job. As is C. It all
depends on getting support from the developer community (yes guys,
thats you!) . I would certainly volunteer work hours for this, but
only if there is true interest.

/Kaare