Re: pkmkdoc spec available?
Re: pkmkdoc spec available?
- Subject: Re: pkmkdoc spec available?
- From: Philip Aker <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 5 Oct 2008 02:29:02 -0700
On Oct 4, 2008, at 3:27 PM, Bill Coderre wrote:
I'd love to have a publicly available spec for this...
The official answer will probably be that you can file a bug report
on this requesting the format to be made available publicly.
I will save you some time: I filed a enhancement request for that
more than 3 years ago regarding the format of PackageMaker
documents. I think the answer at one point was something equivalent
to: which word don't you understand in 'proprietary format'?
So your best option is to document it yourself.
Why not document the formats of installer PACKAGES themselves?
1) Installer packages are much less buggy
2) They are a lot more likely to be supported in a few years...
Seriously, a bundle package contains a pretty small number of things
to document, and it's easily constructed using common unix tools.
Sheesh, mkbom even has a pretty good man page...
I recommend moving to the professional level of an XML Schema
description <http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-1/> for describing package
formats since it is the international standard. This would bring the
benefit of stability for both users and developers since the
validation features can help to locate bugs before they make it into
release versions while the structural description can provide a means
to interface the format with tools, applications, and documentation
facilities easily. In addition it has versioning capabilities so it
can handle future needs without the development team having to get
their shorts tied in a knot at every upgrade (or suffer the barbs of
this list!).
You are right that packages don't have a large number of components.
Compared to the needs of CSISC <http://www.cdisc.org/models/odm/v1.3/index.html
> or the Data Standards Secretariat <http://www.dss-snd.gc.ca/public_MainPage_e.htm
> [1] what is being dealt here with seems absolutely puny. Yet these
organizations deal effectively with complex documents in multiple
output formats using multiple tool/application interfaces (on multiple
platforms). That is the power of XML Schema.
[1] Various documents including taxonomy and element descriptions
available after you sign a download agreement.
Philip Aker
echo email@hidden@nl | tr a-z@. p-za-o.@
Democracy: Two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch.
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