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<!DOCTYPE document PUBLIC "-//APACHE//DTD Documentation V1.3//EN" "../dtd/document-v13.dtd">

<document>
    <header>
        <title>POI-HDGF - Java API To Access Microsoft Visio Format Files</title>
        <subtitle>Overview</subtitle>
        <authors>
            <person name="Nick Burch" email="nick at apache dot org"/>
        </authors>
    </header>

    <body>
        <section>
            <title>Overview</title>

            <p>HDGF is the POI Project's pure Java implementation of the Visio file format.</p>
            <p>Currently, HDGF provides a low-level, read-only api for 
              accessing Visio documents. It also provides a 
              <link href="http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/poi/trunk/src/scratchpad/src/org/apache/poi/hdgf/extractor/">way</link>
              to extract the textual content from a file.
            </p>
			<p>At this time, there is no <em>usermodel</em> api or similar,
			 only low level access to the streams, chunks and chunk commands.
			 Users are advised to check the unit tests to see how everything
			 works. They are also well advised to read the documentation
			 supplied with 
			 <link href="http://web.archive.org/web/20071212220759/http://www.gnome.ru/projects/vsdump_en.html">vsdump</link>
			 to get a feel for how Visio files are structured.</p>
			<p>To get a feel for the contents of a file, and to track down
			 where data of interest is stored, HDGF comes with
			 <link href="http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/poi/trunk/src/scratchpad/src/org/apache/poi/hdgf/dev/">VSDDumper</link>
			 to print out the contents of the file. Users should also make
			 use of 
			 <link href="http://web.archive.org/web/20071212220759/http://www.gnome.ru/projects/vsdump_en.html">vsdump</link>
			 to probe the structure of files.</p>
            <note> 
                This code currently lives the 
                <link href="http://svn.apache.org/viewcvs.cgi/poi/trunk/src/scratchpad/">scratchpad area</link> 
                of the POI SVN repository. 
				Ensure that you have the scratchpad jar or the scratchpad 
                build area in your
				classpath before experimenting with this code.
			</note>

			<section>
				<title>Steps required for write support</title>
				<p>Currently, HDGF is only able to read visio files, it is
				 not able to write them back out again. We believe the
				 following are the steps that would need to be taken to
				 implement it.</p>
				<ol>
				 <li>Re-write the decompression support in LZW4HDGF as
				  HDGFLZW, which will be much better documented, and also 
				  under the ASL. <strong>Completed October 2007</strong></li>
				 <li>Add compression support to HDGFLZW. 
				  <strong>In progress - works for small streams but encoding
               goes wrong on larger ones</strong></li>
				 <li>Have HDGF just write back the raw bytes it read in, and
				  have a test to ensure the file is un-changed.</li>
				 <li>Have HDGF generate the bytes to write out from the
				  Stream stores, using the compressed data as appropriate,
				  without re-compressing. Plus test to ensure file is
				  un-changed.</li>
				 <li>Have HDGF generate the bytes to write out from the
				  Stream stores, re-compressing any streams that were 
                  decompressed. Plus test to ensure file is un-changed.</li>
				 <li>Have HDGF re-generate the offsets in pointers for the
				  locations of the streams. Plus test to ensure file is
				  un-changed.</li>
				 <li>Have HDGF re-generate the bytes for all the chunks, from
				  the chunk commands. Tests to ensure the chunks are 
				  serialized properly, and then that the file is un-changed</li>
				 <li>Alter the data of one command, but keep it the same
				  length, and check visio can open the file when written 
				  out.</li>
				 <li>Alter the data of one command, to a new length, and
				  check that visio can open the file when written out.</li>
				</ol>
			</section>
        </section>
    </body>
</document>
