Maybe we need to nail the drawing capabilities that we want to support first, before we can define the file format that AnyWikiDraw? should use for storing drawings.

Required drawing capabilities:

• Connections between figures, that don't break, when figures are moved
• Support for text areas with arbitrary "decorators", in order to support text inside of a rectangle, ellipse, rounded rectangle, diamond, cloud, ...
  • Hmm, do we need this explicitly?, could we not just associate text with arbitrary 'figures', as this would cover connectors as well ? While I'm thinking of this, one thing that is *very* useful [and not at first obvious] about PmWikiDraw is the ability to associate urls/links within the drawing, this can be very handy, and we need to carry that functionality forward!
    • If we just "group" a text figure with another figure, then the other figure won't change its size, when the text inside of the text figure changes. I am looking for a user experience like in Open Office Draw and in Microsoft Office Word. But maybe, I am somewhat too fixed on this?
    • URL/URI/IRI Linking is definitely something that needs to be supported.
• Stroke support: dashes, double strokes, stroke placements
• Stroke ends/Connection ends, supporting independant endings, size independent of size of stroke
• More things?
• Less things? Is there something of the above, that we don't need?

SVG Mobile 1.2

• Advantages
  • Excellent support by many open source applications
  • Supports dashes
• Disadvantages
  • No connections between figures
  • No support for text areas with decorators
  • No double strokes
  • No stroke placement support

Open Document

• Advantages
  • Supports connections between figures
  • Supports dashes
  • Support for text areas with decorators using "Enhanced Geometry" equations
• Disadvantages
  • No double strokes
  • No stroke placement support

Completed steps:

• Implement prototype SVG support in JHotDraw? 7 (completed in January 2007 for JHotDraw? 7.0.8).

Next steps:

• Implement prototype Open Document Drawing support in JHotDraw? 7.