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Posted to user@poi.apache.org by Rainer Schwarze <rs...@admadic.de> on 2006/09/20 15:32:16 UTC
Re: HWPF: Writing/Copying Word files - Word crashes when
saving such files
At 13:21 20.09.2006, Nick Burch wrote:
>Unfortunately, the guy who wrote most of HWPF went to work for a company
>that has licensed the file format docs from Microsoft, before he got
>everything working. That does mean that some things don't work, and
>there's not really anyone around who knows enough about the word file
>format to be able to provide fixes.
Thanks for the information. I seem to remember that I read that
somewhere on the HWPF web pages but would not have expected that
there's so little activity on HWPF compared to the big work and
interest on HSSF.
[DOP size...]
>Sounds like you know more about the word file format than most of us do.
>Don't suppose you fancy contributing some patches? :)
I'm not sure whether my brain is happy with word file format
knowledge or not... (Sometimes its definitely not...)
Anyway, providing patches would surely be interesting. I'll stick my
head out of my box when time is ready for patches :-) (Now climbing
back into my box brooding over word format.)
Rainer
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Re: HWPF-Development
Posted by Nick Burch <ni...@torchbox.com>.
On Fri, 29 Sep 2006, Rainer Schwarze wrote:
> I already wondered a bit how a good automated test case could be done
> when dealing with Word files (surely applies to Excel, Powerpoint
> too). Reading something from a file is probably easily checked. But
> writing it properly surely needs a human who's checking whether Word
> crashes or not.
> Are there already some solutions to automatically test "file writes"
> for correctness in the H??F-projects?
Not really. You kinda just have to test as many of the records as you can
automatically, and then periodically test the whole output yourself.
Another (sometimes hard) option is to apply a bunch of opperations, and
try to get from one known-good file to another
Nick
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Re: HWPF-Development
Posted by Rainer Schwarze <rs...@admadic.de>.
At 12:18 26.09.2006, Nick Burch wrote:
>It's all a question of developers with the know-how being willing to spend
>the time on the code. We only had the one guy (Ryan) doing HWPF work, so
>with him gone there's no-one to contribute new code, but also no-one to
>mentor new HWPF coders.
(I sent my reply to poi-dev, because I had the impression, that its
now not much of a poi-user thing now. Please correct me if it should
not be that way.)
Indeed :-) Climbing into sources from someone else is complicated
enough - adding this "Horrible-*-Format" stuff can easily give the rest...
>Great, we'd love to have you on board. If you have patches, just post them
>to bugzilla, and maybe drop a note to poi-dev explaining it. Ideally,
>submit patches with test cases, so we can be sure that future changes
>don't break your code.
I already wondered a bit how a good automated test case could be done
when dealing with Word files (surely applies to Excel, Powerpoint
too). Reading something from a file is probably easily checked. But
writing it properly surely needs a human who's checking whether Word
crashes or not.
Are there already some solutions to automatically test "file writes"
for correctness in the H??F-projects?
>If you have coding queries, give us a shout on poi-dev. If you have word
>format queries, it's often worth trying asking the other open source
>projects. The koffice powerpoint guy gave me some useful insight into how
>everything fitted together when I was starting on hslf.
Thanks for the hint. I already could remove potential reasons for my
problems by comparing output files of OpenOffice, AbiWord etc.
Unfortunately I'm still not able to reliably make sure that Word does
not crash using HWPF-generated files. In any case I'll go around and
ask some questions :-)
best wishes, Rainer
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Re: HWPF: Writing/Copying Word files - Word crashes when saving
such files
Posted by Nick Burch <ni...@torchbox.com>.
On Wed, 20 Sep 2006, Rainer Schwarze wrote:
> At 13:21 20.09.2006, Nick Burch wrote:
>> Unfortunately, the guy who wrote most of HWPF went to work for a company
>> that has licensed the file format docs from Microsoft, before he got
>> everything working. That does mean that some things don't work, and
>> there's not really anyone around who knows enough about the word file
>> format to be able to provide fixes.
>
> Thanks for the information. I seem to remember that I read that
> somewhere on the HWPF web pages but would not have expected that there's
> so little activity on HWPF compared to the big work and interest on
> HSSF.
It's all a question of developers with the know-how being willing to spend
the time on the code. We only had the one guy (Ryan) doing HWPF work, so
with him gone there's no-one to contribute new code, but also no-one to
mentor new HWPF coders.
>> Sounds like you know more about the word file format than most of us do.
>> Don't suppose you fancy contributing some patches? :)
>
> I'm not sure whether my brain is happy with word file format knowledge
> or not... (Sometimes its definitely not...) Anyway, providing patches
> would surely be interesting. I'll stick my head out of my box when time
> is ready for patches :-) (Now climbing back into my box brooding over
> word format.)
Great, we'd love to have you on board. If you have patches, just post them
to bugzilla, and maybe drop a note to poi-dev explaining it. Ideally,
submit patches with test cases, so we can be sure that future changes
don't break your code.
If you have coding queries, give us a shout on poi-dev. If you have word
format queries, it's often worth trying asking the other open source
projects. The koffice powerpoint guy gave me some useful insight into how
everything fitted together when I was starting on hslf.
Nick
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