[Scummvm-devel] ScummVM 0.13.0 plans

Max Horn max at quendi.de
Sat Dec 20 17:53:28 CET 2008


Am 20.12.2008 um 16:39 schrieb Vicent Marti:

> Hey Max, all:
>
> sorry for my absence lately, I've been quite busy with school, since
> exams are coming (in February, *sigh*) and this year they look scarier
> than usual. Maybe I'm just growing old. I made very little progress
> with the xml-to-binary parser; as you can see on the SVN server, the
> parsing of <render_data> layouts is pretty much done, and comes out
> really tiny and optimized. However, I'm kind of stuck with the parsing
> of the actual layouts, since the layouts definitions heavily rely on
> nesting -obviously, since they are written in XML, which is not that
> easy to translate into a binary format.

One immediate idea is to use a chunked format like IFF: You translate  
an XML element like <foo>...</foo> to the following:  4 bytes header  
(e.g. 'FOO '), then 4 bytes length of the following data(in LE or BE,  
pick one), then the data. The data itself can be more chunks -- e.g.  
corresponding to attributes, nested XML elements, actual text  
content ... :)

This way, you can even skip over unsupported (too old or too new)  
chunks when reading the binary data. Plus, we already have code in  
common/iff_container.h for reading IFF-style files (you don't *have*  
to use that, though).


> I promise I'll look into it during these Christmas holidays, once I
> have some spare time. Hopefully I can also push some last minute fixes
> to the GUI before the release.

That would be great :)

Since I submitted my thesis last thursday, I might have some time to  
help you out, too. Feel free to get in touch.


Cheers,
Max




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