Converting a Stack to many formats starting from XML

Colin Holgate coiin at verizon.net
Thu Jun 7 09:53:00 EDT 2012


XML predates RunRev, though it's only been a standard for five years or so. But Richard was onto the main reason why it hasn't been used to convert things to other formats. XML just describes a way of structuring data, it doesn't specify what that data is. Even if you take something that is highly specified, such as Collada (which is an XML description of a 3D model, scene or animation), it still won't be compatible unless the importer knows everything there is to know about the data. One curious example of how hard that can be is with the program Cheetah3D. It has a Collada export feature, but it cant' import Collada!

You could choose to export a set of things from LiveCode that you know to be common amongst other tools, and that would at least give you a starting point for the interface design. Converting code would be tricky though, and any of LiveCode's custom features might be impossible to export in a way that other tools could make sense of.

So, the main use for exporting XML might be as a way to take a stack and get it into an older version of LiveCode, or perhaps as a text file backup of a stack.



More information about the use-livecode mailing list