[Libreoffice] libvisio: how can I help?

[Fridrich Strba]

Hello,

On 09/01/12 11:24, Michael Meeks wrote:
>>  I would like to start tackling some of them but as I'm not familiar
>> with the code base, I would welcome suggestions as to which ones are
>> likely to be reasonably easy hacks.
> 	I'm not an expert on this - so treat this with a pinch of salt, until
> Fridrich arrives ;-) From what I recall, most of Fridrich's filters
> essentially generate SAX style events and these are rendered onto the
> libwpg::WPGPaintInterface 'painter' - which in turn generates ODF.
> 	So - to extend it; I'd save your broken document as flat ODF: a.fodg,
> then tweak it to be the document it should be and re-save as b.fodg.
> When you diff -u these two files you should see the elements and
> attributes that have changed.
> 	Armed with that, I'd poke at the libvisio code and the
> WPGPaintInterface to see how it converts that good stuff, and the
> attributes / elements associated with that & extend the code to handle
> your cases.

Reasonably accurate account, given that Michael is a real novice in this
realm of spirit.

But, let me give a quick overview of libvisio architecture:

1) Two main api fuctions principally in VisioDocument.h:
	a) isSupported
	b) parse
   One convenience function in the same header:
	c) generateSVG

2) VSDXParser class is the base class for reading the documents.
VSD6Parser and VSD11Parser are derived classes that cater for
differences between the two formats.

3) Document is read twice and the reader classes call functions of the
VSDXCollector interface, first using the VSDXStylesCollector and second
time using the VSDXContentCollector to receive the information.

4) VSDXContentCollector is processing information received from parser
along with information collected by the VSDXStylesCollector and calling
the callbacks from the libwpg::WPGPaintInterface.

5) Some complications given the need to first store some elements of a
shape into memory and then output them using the information about in
which order they should be painted.

Now, if you have cases of shapes that are not correctly converted, the
best is to take the document, copy it and try to create a minumum
document that still exhibits the problem. Then we can together
introspect it and try to find the reasons of that misbehaviour. Like
that I can help you to get into the logic of the file-format.

Any chance you can be on IRC during CET day?

F.