[Mote-dev] XML Schema for plot definition

[Stephen Q. <st...@ja...>]

Hi All,

In an attempt to get things moving at a decent pace for the Mote plot
definition code i am looking to get a prototype app out reasonably
quickly. With this in mind i am looking for volunteers to help me get
a basic universe schema developed and an app that can read this schema
and interact with a user to create a valid XML document that can later
be converted into the Perl code.

Right now i know a bit about XML but very little about schemas so i am
going to spend a while getting up to speed with things. The best
resource page on the web seems, unsurprisingly, to be the W3C site:

http://www.w3.org/XML/Schema

I would think that anything linked from there comes highly recommended
but in particular i would like to point out the W3C tutorial and
specification pages:

Part 0 Primer     - http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-0/
Part 1 Structures - http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-1/
Part 2 Data Types - http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-2/

Anyone who is interested in helping me really should be reading these
3 documents.

Once we have a basic schema which roughly details our universe we can
look to writing an app that can understand this and interact with a
user. A user can use this app to create a universe definition,
populating it with solar systems, planets, ships, etc.. 

This app will probably be written in Perl as that is what i know best
and i am aware of a number of XML modules that are readily available
for Perl, we can also make use of the Perl Tk or Perl Gtk modules to
create an interface.

At this stage this is very much a proof of concept just to show that
it is vaguely possible. The final product may bear no resemblance to
this version but it will at least be a start.

All comments, criticisms and suggestions are most welcome as are all
offers of help.


Stephen