XML Standards for Pipe Tobacco Applications

The problem they try to solve is a familiar one: a list of jars in a cellar, the measurement data of a collection, or hundreds of smoking notes can become inaccessible once the program used to record them is abandoned or loses support. A shared file format allows the same data to be exported and reopened in another tool.

The schemas are published on the site of ThePipeTool, which presents itself as an open-format initiative; as of September 2025, all three are at version 1.0 and each is offered as its own XSD file along with a sample XML file.

The Inventory Side

Two legs of the set deal directly with cataloging. The pipe inventory schema records the profile of each individual pipe: brand, carver, model and model number, stamp, shape, finish, mouthpiece material, country of origin, and dates of manufacture and acquisition. Measurements are gathered into a separate internal structure — length, bowl height, outer diameter, bowl diameter, bowl depth, and weight — so they remain orderable without mixing into free text. A separate notes block, meanwhile, carries which blend the pipe has been set aside for and its current status (for example, resting).

The tobacco inventory schema is for the cellar. It includes fields for blend name and brand, country, weight, storage form and quantity, batch number, the party that prepared the blend, dates of production and acquisition, condition, and short notes. These fields make it possible to trace retrospectively which batch was jarred when during tobacco aging.