[OSM-dev] Schema for v0.6 OSM files?

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 03/28/12 17:08, Stefan Keller wrote:
> We're speaking of about three pages of XML and that is not that big thing.
> Of course I could do it but who - if not the developers - would know
> better than they themselves?
> I think that it would be a sign of maturity of the OSM project if an
> XML schema would exist!

It is easy to write an XML schema but it would never be binding for 
anyone. The problem is that people would still assume that the schema 
was somehow the gold standard and every OSM XML file that they ever see 
would comply to that "standard", and that is simply not the case.

For example, JOSM writes almost-compatible OSM XML but has an additional 
"action" attribute. Of course someone only looking at the API code would 
not know that there are files with such an attribute. So would it be 
included in the "standard" or not? And if not, it's not going to be long 
until someone pops up on the JOSM list and complains that JOSM was 
writing "invalid" files (because they don't comply with the "standard").

There are other tools that do similar things.

I think the better way is to think of our XML as a general, weakly 
formatted exchange format, instead of something that conforms to a given 
schema. Think of our XML as if it were JSON.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"