.draw File-Extension

For some reasons I will "only" use Software, which will provide me with files, that I can use in long term, also when the Software doesn't anymore exist or it is broken or out of Date for some reasons. And so I was wondering about the file-extension? What are .draw and .map-files, what kind of standarts have this files?

Then also: which software will give me the possibility to open .draw or .map??? And I saw also, that there exists a standalone version, but where?

Regards -- SaschaBuechel - 08 Apr 2010

.draw files are generated from JHotDraw (which is encapsulated by JHotDrawPlugin) and are a plain-text drawing format - in fact, they are a simple serialisation of the internal data structures of the Java program that manipulates them. They do not correspond to any common standard, but Java code is freely available to read and write these files.

.map files are plain-text files that contain a fragment of standard HTML with embedded macros - just like a Foswiki topic, in fact. They are generated by an extension to JHotDraw which I wrote. Again the source code that generates them is freely available.

-- CrawfordCurrie - 09 Apr 2010