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2.4 Legacy Detail Member XML Format

The design of the detail XML format is not what one would end up with for describing pivot tables. This is because it is a special case of a much more general format (“visualization XML” or “VizML”) that can describe a wide range of visualizations. Most of this generality is overkill for tables, and so we end up with a funny subset of a general-purpose format.

An XML Schema for VizML is available, distributed with SPSS binaries, under a nonfree license. It contains documentation that is occasionally helpful.

This section describes the detail XML format using the same notation already used for the structure XML format (see Structure Member Format). See src/output/spv/detail-xml.grammar in the PSPP source tree for the full grammar that it uses for parsing.

The important elements of the detail XML format are:

• Variables. See Variable Elements.
• Assignment of variables to axes. A variable can appear as columns, or rows, or layers. The faceting element and its sub-elements describe this assignment.
• Styles and other annotations.

This description is not detailed enough to write legacy tables. Instead, write tables in the light binary format.

• The visualization Element
• Variable Elements
• The extension Element
• The graph Element
• The location Element
• The faceting Element
• The facetLayout Element
• The label Element
• The setCellProperties Element
• The setFormat Element
• The interval Element
• The style Element
• The labelFrame Element
• Legacy Properties