Re: Docs for outputting XML suitable for OG use

On Jun 3, 2009, at 9:29 AM, Mark Anderson wrote:
> I'm wondering whether it might be easier to go via VXD (though I  
> don't have Visio) given that Windows apps tend to have better/more  
> thorough documentation - I've seen some for VXD on MSDN.

As Joel said, if the GraphViz "dot" format (or specifically the subset  
that Graffle supports) is rich enough for your purposes, then that's  
what I'd recommend using. It's easy to write, it's fairly human- 
readable, and it's rich enough to handle most data-visualization sorts  
of tasks that one might use Graffle for.

For more complicated things, AppleScript and/or directly creating  
Graffle files are reasonable things to do.

> I'm looking at a way to get map view data from Eastgate's Tinderbox  
> (TB) into OG for visual polish of 'finished' TB analysis. TB can  
> export XML so I figure I ought to be able to make some OG importable  
> data. However, it seems the OG Graffle files, whilst XML aren't  
> documented.

We don't document the format anywhere, but we're happy to answer  
occasional questions from people who are trying to read and write it.  
However, I want to make it clear up front that it's not an officially  
supported, public format: we don't make any guarantees about what  
future versions of Graffle will do.

The save files are in Apple's XML property list format --- this format  
is documented on Apple's site and is quite simple. But the property  
list, like XML itself, is just a way to represent another data  
structure. If you want to look at the contents of a Graffle document,  
it's probably easiest to convert it to the old-style "text" property  
list format using the "plutil" tool that ships with MacOSX. (A few  
data types, like dates, can't be represented in the old format, so  
this might not result in a still-readable Graffle document, but it  
will make the structure of the file more obvious.)