[Verse-dev] Saving and Loading

[Emil Brink]

Emil Brink wrote:
> Hello.
> 
> Earlier today, in the Uni-Verse PCC meeting, we talked about persistance
> and saving/loading Verse server state.
> 
> There are tools to do this, but they are not officially released yet. If
> there is interest in having them, we must of course make them available 
> anyway, to help you out.

[...]

I'm replying to myself here, with a brief update:

I started yesterday to get this very ad-hoc format formally defined, by 
applying some standard XML syntax description to it (I know of DTDs, XML 
Schema, and Relax NG, although I'm most familiar with DTDs). However, 
that failed. :/ This is because the VML format, as used up to know, is a 
bit ... too relaxed. It relies on attribute values to control element 
parsing, which is something I have not been able to express with any of 
the above-mentioned formalisms.

So, after brief discussion with Eskil, I will change the format around 
slightly, so it becomes possible to describe it formally. I feel that a 
formal definition of the syntax is helpful to have. I will probably use 
either XML Schema or Relax NG for this.

I anticipate being able to translate any old-style VML files into the 
new format very easily, so I hope we can drop support for it from the 
loader tool rather quickly after these changes have been made.

Comments welcome.

Regards,

/Emil