[vtkusers] VTK XML File Formats

[Will Schroeder]

Hi Folks-

Brad King at Kitware has done a great job introducing some new XML-based 
file formats to VTK. These are a significant addition to the toolkit 
because they support random data access, compression, base-64 encoding, 
parallel I/O, streaming, big and little endian support, smooth handling of 
64-bit and 32-bit vtkIdType data, and of course they bring the benefits of 
XML. All VTK dataset types are supported, and multiple point and cell 
attribute data is naturally handled. They also define a set of new file 
extensions for the various types of VTK data. Note that the XML formats are 
the preferred ones to use now and into the future.

I have reworked the file-formats.pdf  document 
(http://www.vtk.org/pdf/file-formats.pdf) to include the XML file 
descriptions. Please read it over, and better yet, try out the formats and 
provide some feedback. (If you look in the CVS version of the VTK/IO/ 
directory you will see many vtkXML___ readers and helper objects. For 
example, vtkXMLImageDataReader reads image data, etc.)

Will



William J. Schroeder, Ph.D.
Kitware, Inc.
469 Clifton Corporate Parkway
Clifton Park, NY 12065
will.schroeder at kitware.com
1-518-371-3971 x102 (phone)
1-518-371-3971 (fax)