RE: view xml-schema with svg

Hi Cyrill,

I agree entirely with Andrew on the suitability of SVG for this kind of
task.
I have put together a little tool, "Squirrel"  [1] for graphically exploring
XML documents which use SVG as a front end to server-side Java.

SVG is XML, and that allows quite a few alternate solutions to this kind of
problem. Server-side processing as in Squirrel can be used (in pretty much
any language you like) or the work can be done by scripts within the SVG
itself, as Jim Ley has done with his 'Simplistic RDF Editor' [2]. There are
also several approaches to the code itself - looking at XML then DOM (as in
Squirrel) or XSLT (as in the Slidemaker mini-app also at the link below) can
be used directly to generate the SVG.

If you are comfortable with Java, then I'd strongly recommend looking at the
Apache Batik toolkit - very powerful. Whatever language you prefer, I'd
strongly recommend looking at SVG Unleashed ;-)

Cheers,
Danny.


[1] http://ideagraph.net/unleashed/
(I've not finished this page yet! - I'll put the source up right away)

[2] http://jibbering.com/rdf/editor.html
---
Danny Ayers
<stuff> http://www.isacat.net </stuff>

Idea maps for the Semantic Web
http://ideagraph.net


  -----Original Message-----
  From: AndrewWatt2000@aol.com [mailto:AndrewWatt2000@aol.com]
  Sent: 21 October 2002 22:12
  To: czadra@bluewin.ch; xmlschema-dev@w3.org
  Subject: Re: view xml-schema with svg


  In a message dated 21/10/2002 20:58:54 GMT Daylight Time,
czadra@bluewin.ch writes:



    I also had the idea to develope a tool that generates a svg file with
    the structure, but I'm not sure if SVG is the right format. Is there
    anything similar in progress?

    Many thanks in advance.


  Cyrill,

  In my opinion SVG would be a reasonable choice. The ability to pan, zoom
and scale SVG documents allows a great deal of flexibility in presentation
and navigation.

  I know that Danny Ayers, one of my co-authors for SVG Unleashed,

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0672324296/ref%3DNOSIM/edititwriteco-
20/102-3620759-9518510,
  has done some broadly similar exploratory work with SVG and Java. I don't
think he has done anything specifically with schema documents but you might
want to contact him to discuss what he has done and the relevant issues he
found: danny@isacat.net

  I hope that helps.

  Andrew Watt