There are quite a few requests floating around that seem to me could be implemented by third parties if the CWP files were formatted in standard XML, with a published schema.
 
This would take development load off of the Bakers, while allowing some organizational tools to be implemented for Sonar users.
 
 

The downside of course is that SONAR then needs to be able to cope with badly formatted XML that's out of their control: non-trivial.

KPerry
The downside of course is that SONAR then needs to be able to cope with badly formatted XML that's out of their control: non-trivial.

I'm suggesting that Cake produce the XML file instead of the current format.  It's then up to third parties to cope with the format and standard that Cake provides

Easily solved by allowing export as XML only. Might be useful.

What made me think of this is the requests out there for a routing matrix, VST/i that are actually used and the clean audio functions.  Having to open each project and export an xml file for each would be cumbersome for "reports" being generated across all projects.  I presented XML as the format because it's easy to read.  The idea being that one could scan the project tree programmatically, reading info from project files that already exist.
 
The reality is that publishing the schema for the existing format would be almost as easy to use.

BobF

KPerry
The downside of course is that SONAR then needs to be able to cope with badly formatted XML that's out of their control: non-trivial.

I'm suggesting that Cake produce the XML file instead of the current format.  It's then up to third parties to cope with the format and standard that Cake provides

But it's easy to edit a text (XML) file incorrectly, so there's a reasonable amount of error handling required if SONAR needs to import it.  And if SONAR doesn't need to (re)import it, I see little benefit of it being available.

KPerry

BobF

KPerry
The downside of course is that SONAR then needs to be able to cope with badly formatted XML that's out of their control: non-trivial.

I'm suggesting that Cake produce the XML file instead of the current format.  It's then up to third parties to cope with the format and standard that Cake provides

But it's easy to edit a text (XML) file incorrectly, so there's a reasonable amount of error handling required if SONAR needs to import it.  And if SONAR doesn't need to (re)import it, I see little benefit of it being available.

I gave three examples of current requests that could be fulfilled by simply reading/collating information in cwp files.  No write-back necessary.
 
Just a thought on a way to break some of the dependency on the Bakers to let them focus on the stuff that helps creativity flow.