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<blockquote data-quote="ninjeff" data-source="post: 4310935" data-attributes="member: 43814">megasycophant: Welcome to the thread! As a fellow geek, I can't help appreciating that your idea is awesome and cool: a schema that can validate a character all in one step. Unfortunately, I see two major problems with it. First of all, it's infeasible. A schema like this would require updating not just with every new book, but also with every online Dragon article. The new version of the schema would then have to be distributed to application developers and users, who would have to have the latest version to be able to use their characters. Also, a feat like:would necessitate the creation of an &lt;attackOrDamageFeat&gt; type, which seems a bit over the top. The types of choices in the books can vary wildly, which is why we're allowing most of them (not feats, skills, languages or powers) to be specified in plaintext.Second, it's illegal. IANAL, but I'm pretty sure distribution of a schema containing a significant amount of the PHB's rules text would constitute a copyright infringement.With these points in mind, I've decided to stick with a schema that only validates whether an XML file represents a 4e D&amp;D character, not whether it's a correct character. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />However, you're absolutely right that schemas for datasets are a good idea. If we have well-defined datasets, then application developers can hook into those rather than having to hardcode rules into their applications, which helps them avoid breaking laws. Users could enter the data on their own from the books (legal, AFAIK) or find datasets elsewhere (illegal, but not our problem). Maybe a parser could even be made to turn rules text into XML data.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="ninjeff, post: 4310935, member: 43814"] megasycophant: Welcome to the thread! As a fellow geek, I can't help appreciating that your idea is awesome and cool: a schema that can validate a character all in one step. Unfortunately, I see two major problems with it. First of all, it's infeasible. A schema like this would require updating not just with every new book, but also with every online Dragon article. The new version of the schema would then have to be distributed to application developers and users, who would [i]have[/i] to have the latest version to be able to use their characters. Also, a feat like:would necessitate the creation of an <attackOrDamageFeat> type, which seems a bit over the top. The types of choices in the books can vary wildly, which is why we're allowing most of them (not feats, skills, languages or powers) to be specified in plaintext. Second, it's illegal. IANAL, but I'm pretty sure distribution of a schema containing a significant amount of the PHB's rules text would constitute a copyright infringement. With these points in mind, I've decided to stick with a schema that only validates whether an XML file represents a 4e D&D character, [i]not[/i] whether it's a [i]correct[/i] character. :) However, you're absolutely right that schemas for datasets are a good idea. If we have well-defined datasets, then application developers can hook into those rather than having to hardcode rules into their applications, which helps [i]them[/i] avoid breaking laws. Users could enter the data on their own from the books (legal, AFAIK) or find datasets elsewhere (illegal, but not our problem). Maybe a parser could even be made to turn rules text into XML data. [/QUOTE]

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