RE: [Pythoncard-users] components framework

> Also, we might want to think about using XML as the spec format.  Kevin
> mentioned supporting the wxWindows XML format.  I don't know if we could
> support it directly, but we could provide a translator that converted a
> wxWindows spec to a PythonCard spec.
>
> XML is obviously more verbose, but at least it's self-describing, and
> that can be a plus.

XML may be workable, but the wxWindows XML resource format is not suitable
for representing the spec, it is designed for loading wxWindows/wxPython
layouts and menus. The source code and associated README is the only real
documentation right now.

http://cvs.wxwindows.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/wxWindows/contrib/src/xrc/

http://cvs.wxwindows.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/wxWindows/contrib/src/xrc/FORMA
T.txt?rev=HEAD&content-type=text/vnd.viewcvs-markup

demo.py included in wxPython includes a sample. See XML_Resource under
Window Layout.

There is no DTD for the XML resource format because a DTD apparently can't
describe all the format needs. The main benefit of using the wxWindows XML
resource format is to leverage other wxWindows layout tools such as
wxDesigner. Before we would be able to do that we will have to get more
involved so that the tools and resource format support classes other than
the base wxWindows classes. The format may also need to be enhanced to
support two-step initialization and names for non-window resource items such
as menus.

I would like to have a wxWindows/wxPython/PythonCard compatible resource
format, but a lot more work needs to be done at the wx-dev C++ level to make
this happen. We can use XML for the resource spec, but that is a separate
topic and for now I recommend using the dictionary/list format until we know
all our requirements and standardize the fields, type info, order, etc.

ka