Trying to find the sources for HWPF

[Nathan Roy <NR...@spheris.com>]

I have downloaded the source from CVS for the entire POI project using the
public CVS account, but it does not seem to contain classes for HWPF. Could
anyone assist me in obtaining these class files? The documentation states
that in 2003 it could already read simple Word documents, however, it looks
like development has been stagnant. Does anyone have information on the
progress of the HWPF source?

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Re: Trying to find the sources for HWPF

[Rainer Klute <kl...@rainer-klute.de>]

Am Mittwoch, den 02.03.2005, 17:06 -0600 schrieb Nathan Roy:
> I have downloaded the source from CVS for the entire POI project using the
> public CVS account, but it does not seem to contain classes for HWPF. Could
> anyone assist me in obtaining these class files? The documentation states
> that in 2003 it could already read simple Word documents, however, it looks
> like development has been stagnant. Does anyone have information on the
> progress of the HWPF source?

Since HWPF is not as mature as we'd like it, it is not yet in the
regular source directory but in the scratchpad instead. You'll find it
in src/scratchpad/src/org/apache/poi/hwpf.

As for the current state of HWPF here's our usual blurb:

At the moment we unfortunately do not have someone taking care for HWPF
and fostering its development. What we need is someone to stand up, take
this thing under his hood as his baby and push it forward. Ryan Ackley,
who put a lot of effort into HWPF, is no longer on board, so HWPF is an
orphan child waiting to be adopted.

If you are interested in becoming the new HWPF pointman, you should look
into the Microsoft Word internals. A good starting point seems to be
Ryan Ackley's overview. This document contains a link to a detailled
Word format description you can find somewhere at
http://www.wotsit.org/. Please do not contact Ryan Ackley directly,
because he is working for a company now that signed a NDA with Microsoft
and thus he will be no longer able to answer questions.

As a first step you should familiarize yourself with the source code,
examples, test cases, and the HWPF patches available at Bugzilla (if
any). Then you should compile an overview of 
      * the current HWPF status,
      * the patches in Bugzilla to be checked in (and those that should
        better be ditched),
      * the available test cases and the test cases still to be written,
      * the available documentation and the docs to be written,
      * anything else that seems reasonable.

When you start start coding, you will not yet have write access to the
CVS repository. Please submit your patches to Bugzilla and nag Rainer
Klute until he commits them. Besides the actual checking in of HWPF
patches Rainer will also do some minor reviews now and then of your
source code patches, test cases and documentation to help ensure
software quality. But most of the time you will be on your own.

Please do not forget to write JUnit test cases and documentation! We
won't accept code that doesn't come with test cases. And please consider
that other contributors should be able to understand your source code
easily. If you need any help getting started with JUnit test cases for
HWPF, please ask on the developers' mailing list! If you show that you
are prepared to stick at it you will most likely be given CVS commit
access.

Important: It is legally vital for POI that you have never seen any
documentation or specification from Microsoft that required you or your
employer to sign an NDA to get it. Please do read the "Contributing to
POI" page for details! This page also contains further information for
you to start POI development.

Of course we will help you as best as we can. However, presently there
is no committer who is really familiar with the Word format, so you'll
be mostly on your own. We are looking forward for you and your
contributions! Honor and glory of becoming a POI committer are waiting!
 
Best regards
Rainer Klute

                           Rainer Klute IT-Consulting GmbH
  Dipl.-Inform.
  Rainer Klute             E-Mail:  klute@rainer-klute.de
  Körner Grund 24          Telefon: +49 172 2324824
D-44143 Dortmund           Telefax: +49 231 5349423

Inhibit software patents: http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/


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