You are really very fast. Thanks so much.
Thanks! We try.
The email is getting a bit swampy so I'm just going to address each topic rather than include all the past thread snippets:
required elementsRequired elements are documented in the XML documentation at:
So for example on the following page, one can fine definition of <clip>:
its listing of subelements contains some items with a "+" and some with "*":
+name, +duration, +rate, in, out, *masterclipid, *ismasterclip, *logginginfo, *enabled, *file, *timecode, *media, marker, *anamorphic, *alphatype, *alphareverse, *labels, *comments, sourcetrack, *compositemode, subclipinfo, filter, stillframe, *stillframeoffset, *startoffset, *endoffset , defaultangle, subframeoffset, start, end, pixelaspectratio, filmdata, uuid, updatebehavior
The note (
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/AppleApplications/Reference/FinalCutPro_XML/Elements/chapter_5_section_1.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP30001156-TPXREF101)
that everyone always misses says "A plus (+) sign precedes a subelement that is required. An asterisk (*) precedes a subelement that cannot be inherited and must be explicitly encoded."
so when I say "required", that is what I mean. Neither mastercomment1 nor commenta are required.
<someElement/>
(nothing)
In FCP, we interpret the absence of an element to be "no element" which is _NOT_ the same as an empty string. (for users, however, you may be right that this experience is the same)
<someElement/>
We interpret this as an empty string value ("").
<someElement></someElement>
This is also an empty string.
<someElement>
</someElement>
As you will have noticed, if you put any amount of white-space, at import time we've decided this is the same as an empty string since we don't know what else it may or may not be given that one may format XML as they will with whitespace.
why does FCP export mastercoment1 and not commenta when neither is touched?
This is due to an implementation detail really so there isn't any logic to understand. So let's just say it is one of the quirks of FCP XML that sometimes we export a bunch of default values and that were we to have infinite time to fix bugs, we'd fix (if we got the bug).
XML interpreted by first character.
If you're talking about what I think you're talking about, we fixed this bug quite a while ago. So putting
<value>... oh really? 23 cats?</value>
or <value>23 cats?</value>
or even <value>23</value>
in the 'str' parameter of a text generator, for example, gets those strings in the text generator. So please try that out and if it still doesn't work attach some XML to the bug you write up.
Hope that helps.
Regards,
Helena