machine-readable DTD

[rwb27]

It would be good to have a formal specification for the XML format - the readme file doesn't define everything, and can't be validated by XML validation tools.

[MakerTobey]

Richard, you have written one, right? Can we add that to the meta repository and start maintaining it? It looks like there will be some XML extensions coming up soon with new collaborators.

[rwb27]

I've not - while I have now reworked all the XML parsing code I didn't write a schema. That said, I probably could do without too much trouble...

[MakerTobey]

I wonder if this has already been solved by proving definitions
here https://www.docubricks.com/software.jsp
and also here: https://opensource.ieee.org/docubricks-maintainers/docubricks-standard
A validation tool sounds very useful in particular to validate the format after document modification in other tools (e.g. as Markup in GitLab).

[rwb27]

Those pages do give most of the information required, but it's not complete - the advantage of a formal datatype definition is that it will force you to specify, for example, which things are attributes and which are sub-tags (those pages don't specify it, and I tend to refer to your typescript parser when I'm looking for that information).

While it's tempting to go for the more readable-looking bullet points that you have, the (admittedly much less attractive) formal specifications are really useful to anyone else looking to work with the format. Of course, you probably want both - but if the friendly description is generated from the formal one, you can be sure that it's consistent and accurate.