| QUOTE (de zaaiers @ November 27, 2013 05:18 pm) |
| I understand it starts xmlwf.exe, but what does this do? |
xmlwf.exe is a small command line utility that tests to see if an xml file (the GPX file is just an xml formatted file) is "well formed" - hence the name xmlwf . If the file is NOT well formed then it reports the line and character number of the first infraction, otherwise it returns an empty string (which means the xml file is good or "well formed").
XML is a well defined standard, and breaking those standards can lead to all sorts of strange errors when processing the file. So if the file is not well formed, I don't want to bother even trying to parse it (a type of all or nothing approach) The "well formed" test doesn't pick up all errors but will usually pick up a very high percentage of the most common/worrying problems.
We could let GSAK do this check via native pascal code, but the main reason I use this utility is that it is blazingly fast doing this test (drop into a command prompt and run it against any GPX file to see what I mean). My testing indicated it was 6x faster than any pascal code/utility I was using.