[linux-dvb] XML Channel file format

[<mocm@convergence.de>]

Reinhard Katzmann writes:
 > Hi!
 > 
 > For my little remote channel tuning application using dtv
 > (very useful for a streaming server based on v4l :-)
 > I'd like to save channels in a quite flexible format which
 > allows user and server channel lists without making two
 > formats but only omitting the unecessary data.
 > 
 > Do you know if anyone created a XML format (either DTD or
 > Schema) for DVB channels ? This would be an advantage so
 > I could base the work on some already existing format.
 > 
 > There are at least 7 different formats for storing channels,
 > linux-dvb has 2, dtv has 2, vdr has at least one, there is
 > a binary/ascii DVBedit and linux mmtools ascii.
 > 
 > I'd really like to have these channels formats in one XML
 > format which is flexible enough for all the applications.
 > As there are already many XML parsers available we could
 > simply create one channel XML parser API for dvb (to be
 > used from a shared lib like libdvbchannel or even integrated
 > into libdvb itself, though separating could make sense).
 > 
 > With best regards,
 > 

I was thinking about that a while ago. The easiest would be to use the
format used by libdvb and change the labels to <labels>, add the
</labels> and iron out some kinks. We could even use the parsing
routines in libdvb. The only thing we had to change is checking for
the end label.
Then we would have something like this:
<dvblist> 
  <LNB> 
    <ID> 0 </ID>
    <TYPE> 1 </TYPE>
    <LOF1> 9750000 </LOF1>
    <LOF2> 10600000 </LOF2>
    <SLOF> 11700000 </SLOF>
    <DISEQCNR> 0 </DISEQCNR>
  </LNB>
  <SAT> 
    <ID> 0192 </ID>
    <NAME> Astra </NAME>
    <LNBID> 0 </LNBID>
    <FMIN> 11700000 </FMIN>
    <FMAX> 12800000 </FMAX>
    <TRANSPONDER> 
      <ID> 0003 </ID>
      <SATID> 0192 </SATID>
      <ONID> 85 </ONID>
      <FREQ> 11720000 </FREQ>
      <POL> H </POL>
      <SRATE> 27500000 </SRATE>
      <FEC> 2 </FEC>
      
      <CHANNEL>
        <ID>  ....
      </CHANNEL>	
      
    </TRANSPONDER>


</dvblist> 

and so on. We would have to think about the hirachy a little and maybe
make the labels a bit more explanatory for better legibility.
Someone already asked about XML a while ago and wanted to suggest a
format, but I haven't heard from him. I haven't worked much with XML
yet, but from what I heard it seems that writing a specialized parser
and output program for the dvb-xml format would be indicated for speed
reasons. Most of the available libs don't seem to concentrate on that
and are probably too general in their purpose.
Once we have the fromat defined, we can of course use standard tools
to work with it.

Marcus

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Dr. Marcus Metzler                             
mocm@netcologne.de                     http://www.metzlerbros.de
mocm@convergence.de                    http://www.convergence.de

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Rosenthaler Str. 51                   
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