xml-dev - Re: Sun StarOffice XML File Format

[Daniel Veillard <Daniel.Veillard@w3.org>]

On Sun, Oct 15, 2000 at 12:58:54AM -0500, Robin Cover wrote:
> In the category of interesting XML applications:
> Sun StarOffice XML formats as presented in the recently-
> published "StarOffice XML File Format Technical Reference
> Manual".

  Just a bit of feedback on it, I did play with it yesterday:
    - uses expat for parsing encapsulated in C++
    - they don't do Dtd validation at loading (which makes sense
      due to the following points).
    - make serious use of namespaces, all elements are in a 
      well defined namespace, there is multiple namespaces
      depending on the semantic of the elements/attributes
    - the generated XML looks clean though there is a bit of
      style extra information stored even if not used
    - their namespace support is done in a clean way (i.e.
      one can change the prefix string and the app still
      recognizes it :-)
    - they can import document with extra namespaces, but
      they can't save the unknow part (this generates a message
      at save time which seems to indicate that those information
      are kept in the internal document model which is a Good
      Thing, because it's probably easy to fix :-)
    - I just look at the SAX wrapper and though I don't enjoy
      C++, the code is somewhat clean and commented

  Globally, the impression is very positive so far ! Though the
whole application isn't really lightweight :-)

  Thank you Sun for providing this great piece of free software !

Daniel, with his Gnome hat

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