Subcommittee 3D DATA SETS FOR LIBRARIES
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This document covers the exchange of dictionary data, formats, special characters, format conversion, validation, and demonstrations. It emphasizes the importance of computer-sensible data and the need for agreed-upon exchange formats. Issues with special characters like Greek letters and the importance of conversion tools are discussed. The validation process, conversion tools, and demonstrations are also highlighted.
Subcommittee 3D DATA SETS FOR LIBRARIES
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Presentation Transcript
Subcommittee 3D DATA SETS FOR LIBRARIES
Exchange of dictionary dataCape Town, 2005-10-193(Cape Town/Radley)3 Donald Radley Chairman, SC3D
Contents • Dictionary data exchange • Exchange formats • Problems with special characters • Format conversion • Dictionary validation • Demonstrations
Dictionary data exchange • Computer-sensible data is essential for application of a data dictionary • Exchange formats must be agreed between supplier and user • It is not reasonable to expect all users to adopt the same format with their associated tools • It follows that dictionaries should be made available in more than one format, or tools be provided to convert among formats
Exchange formats • HTML – as exported from IEC dictionary • STEP Physical File format complying with ISO 10303-21 • TAB-separated, CSV or other tabular formats compatible with spreadsheets • XML – DTD or schema • Simple ASCII tagged format
Problems with special characters • Non-ASCII characters (Greek letters, subscripts, superscripts) cause problems • In principle, Unicode (UTF-8) can be used to represent Greek and other special characters • Unicode appears to support only a few subscripts and superscripts • Use of Unicode varies from format to format • Conversion tools need to take this into account • Transfer of special characters across applications is not transparent
Unicode examples • Greek letter α(alpha) • Unicode value • Decimal 945 • Hexadecimal 03B1 • HTML and SGML - α (or α) • XML – α • α is not accepted • SPF – \X2\03B1\X0\
Format conversion • Tools for conversion between formats are essential • Commercial tools exist for handling SPF and XML files and character-separated tables • Few tools exist for conversion, for example from SPF to XML or vice-versa • Validation of conversion tools is a problem
Dictionary validation • Semantic validation is the responsibility of the Validation Team • Syntactic validation must be performed against the EXPRESS model in IEC 61360-2 • Tools (parsers) exist for this purpose • Currently, tools that will parse a dictionary operate on SPF files only • Different parsers give different results • Can a dictionary in any other format than SPF be said to comply with the model?
Demonstrations • Export of IEC dictionary data • Conversion of downloaded IEC dictionary to SPF, XML and Tagged formats • EXPRESSO parser • Proposed XML schema for dictionaries • Conversion of Tagged format to character-separated tables (for input to IEC database) • Input templates for new class and DET definitions • Using existing definitions as a basis for new ones