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Flat ODF as the Swiss Army Knife

Flat ODF as the Swiss Army Knife

Fridrich Strba

October 11, 2012
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  1. Flat ODF
    as the Swiss Army Knife
    Fridrich Štrba
    Software Engineer
    SUSE/Attachmate

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  2. What is Flat ODF

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  3. 3
    “Normal” ODF File
    • Package OpenDocument File
    ‒ Chapter 3.1.3 of ODF 1.2 specifications
    ‒ Collection of xml files in a ZIP container




    ‒ Images and OLE objects sub-streams in the ZIP container
    ‒ Referenced by xlink:href attribute

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  4. 4
    “Flat” ODF file
    • Single OpenDocument XML Files
    ‒ Chapter 3.1.2 of the ODF 1.2 specifications
    ‒ Contains the whole document
    ‒ root element
    ‒ office:mimetype and office:version attributes
    ‒ Images and OLE objects inlined
    ‒ [base64 data]

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  5. 5
    ZIP Storage (1)
    • Main entry point is the Central Directory End
    located at the end of the ZIP file.
    ‒ Scanning for it towards the end of the file
    ‒ Whole file must be present
    • Pointing at the Central Directory containing entries
    ‒ For name access, iterate over them
    ‒ Need to seek back to read the entry
    • Which contains pointer to Local File Header
    ‒ Seek to local file-header offset
    ‒ Need to seek back again
    ‒ The content of the stream comes after the header

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  6. 6
    ZIP Storage (2)
    FILE
    ENTRY 1

    FILE
    ENTRY 2

    FILE
    ENTRY 3

    FILE
    ENTRY 4

    Local header 1
    Local header 2
    Local header 3
    Local header n
    Relative offset 2
    Relative offset 1
    Relative offset 3
    Relative offset n
    File entry 1
    File entry 2
    File entry 3
    n
    CENTRAL
    DIRECTORY

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  7. Advantages of Flat ODF

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  8. 8
    No Need for Special tools
    • No need for compression and stream extraction
    tools
    ‒ ODF documents can be generated manually
    ‒ Developer modifying a document
    ‒ XSLT tools
    ‒ Programmatic generation of documents
    ‒ Further processing of documents
    ‒ Easier parsing of document and extraction of relevant information

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  9. 9
    Sequential Access to File
    • Difference with ZIP file
    ‒ No need to know the end of the file to start to parse it
    • Exchange file-format par excellence
    ‒ Possibility to communicate document as SAX messages
    ‒ Communicate XML to an application sequentially
    ‒ Possibility to stream document over wire
    ‒ Collaboration protocol?
    ‒ Communication with CMS systems?

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  10. 10
    Storing documents in SCM
    • Package ODF file
    ‒ Stored as binary file
    ‒ Impossibility to see reasonable diff to previous version
    • Simple XML ODF file
    ‒ A text file after all
    ‒ Difference are easily visible between revisions
    ‒ SCMs are designed to handle text files the best
    ‒ Example of LibreOffice templates
    ‒ Stored in git repository

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  11. Examples of Flat ODF use

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  12. 12
    LibreOffice UNO Filter API
    • XSLT based filters
    ‒ com.sun.star.comp.Writer.XMLOasisImporter
    ‒ pushes to LibreOffice flat ODT
    ‒ com.sun.star.comp.Calc.XMLOasisExporter
    ‒ receives from LibreOffice flat ODS
    • XML based filters
    ‒ com::sun::star::xml::sax::XDocumentHandler
    ‒ com.sun.star.document.ImportFilter pushes SAX messages to
    com::sun::star::xml::sax::XDocumentHandler
    ‒ com.sun.star.document.ExportFilter is itself a
    com::sun::star::xml::sax::XDocumentHandler and receives SAX
    messages from LibreOffice

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  13. 13
    File importers
    • Writerperfect ODT generator
    ‒ Libwpd – WordPerfect documents
    ‒ Generates ODT with embedded WPG files as
    elements in flat ODG
    ‒ Libwps – Microsoft Works
    ‒ Generates ODT
    • Writerperfect ODG generator
    ‒ Libwpg – WordPerfect graphics
    ‒ Libvisio – Microsoft Visio diagrams
    ‒ Libcdr – CorelDraw drawings
    ‒ Libmspub – Microsoft Publisher publications
    ‒ Generate ODG documents

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  14. Thank you.
    14
    Single XML OpenDocument
    representation is an important
    part of the ODF ecosystem

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  15. Corporate Headquarters
    Maxfeldstrasse 5
    90409 Nuremberg
    Germany
    +49 911 740 53 0 (Worldwide)
    www.suse.com
    Join us on:
    www.opensuse.org
    15

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