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+<title>Record Generator HOWTO</title>
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+<font size="+1" color="#000000">Navigation</font><font size="-1">
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+<li>
+<a href="../index.html"><font size="-1">Main</font></a>
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+<br>
+<font size="+1" color="#000000">HSSF</font><font size="-1">
+<ul>
+<li>
+<a href="how-to.html"><font size="-1">HOWTO</font></a>
+</li>
+<li>
+<a href="use-case.html"><font size="-1">Use Case</font></a>
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+<a href="diagrams.html"><font size="-1">Pictorial Docs</font></a>
+</li>
+</ul>
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+<br>
+<font size="+1" color="#000000">Contributer's Guide</font><font size="-1">
+<ul>
+<li>
+<a href="record-generator.html"><font size="-1">Record Generator</font></a>
+</li>
+</ul>
+</font>
+<br>
+<br>
+</font></td><td align="left" valign="top" width="*">
+<title>Record Generator HOWTO</title>
+<center>
+<table width="80%">
+<tr>
+<td bgcolor="#F3DD61"><font face="Arial,sans-serif" size="+1">
+<center>
+<b>Record Generator HOWTO</b>
+</center>
+</font></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</center>
+<font size="-2" color="#000000">
+<p>
+<a href="mailto:"></a>
+</p>
+</font>
+<br>
+<div align="right">
+<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" border="0" width="100%">
+<tr>
+<td bgcolor="#525D76"><font color="#ffffff" size="+1"><font face="Arial,sans-serif"><b>How to Use the Record Generator</b></font></font></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>
+<br>
+
+
+<div align="right">
+<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" border="0" width="99%">
+<tr>
+<td bgcolor="#525D76"><font color="#ffffff" size="+0"><font face="Arial,sans-serif"><b>History</b></font></font></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>
+<br>
+
+<p align="justify">
+ The record generator was born from frustration with translating
+ the Excel records to Java classes. Doing this manually is a time
+ consuming process. It's also very easy to make mistakes.
+ </p>
+
+<p align="justify">
+ A utility was needed to take the defintition of what a
+ record looked like and do all the boring stuff. Thus the
+ record generator was born.
+ </p>
+
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+<br>
+
+
+<div align="right">
+<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" border="0" width="99%">
+<tr>
+<td bgcolor="#525D76"><font color="#ffffff" size="+0"><font face="Arial,sans-serif"><b>Capabilities</b></font></font></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>
+<br>
+
+<p align="justify">
+ The record generator takes XML as input and produced the following
+ output:
+ <ul>
+
+<li>A Java file capabile of decoding and encoding the record.</li>
+
+<li>A test class with provides a fill-in-the-blanks implementation of a test case
+ for ensuring the record operates as designed.</li>
+
+</ul>
+
+</p>
+
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+<br>
+
+<div align="right">
+<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" border="0" width="99%">
+<tr>
+<td bgcolor="#525D76"><font color="#ffffff" size="+0"><font face="Arial,sans-serif"><b>Usage</b></font></font></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>
+<br>
+
+<p align="justify">
+ The record generator is invoked as an Ant target (generate-records). It goes
+ through looking for all files in src/records/defintitions ending with _record.xml.
+ It then creates two files; the Java record definition and the Java test case template.
+ </p>
+
+<p align="justify">
+ The records themselves have the following general layout:
+ </p>
+
+<div align="center">
+<table cellspacing="2" cellpadding="2" border="1">
+<tr>
+<td>
+<pre>
+<record id="0x1032" name="Frame" package="org.apache.poi.hssf.record">
+ <description>The frame record indicates whether there is a border
+ around the displayed text of a chart.</description>
+ <author>Glen Stampoultzis (glens at apache.org)</author>
+ <fields>
+ <field type="int" size="2" name="border type">
+ <const name="regular" value="0" description="regular rectangle or no border"/>
+ <const name="shadow" value="1" description="rectangle with shadow"/>
+ </field>
+ <field type="int" size="2" name="options">
+ <bit number="0" name="auto size"
+ description="excel calculates the size automatically if true"/>
+ <bit number="1" name="auto position"
+ description="excel calculates the position automatically"/>
+ </field>
+ </fields>
+</record>
+ </pre>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<p align="justify">
+ Currently the type can be of type int, float or string. The 'int'
+ type covers bytes, shorts and integers which is selected using a
+ size of 1, 2 or 4. An additional type called varword is used to
+ represent a array of word values where the first short is the length
+ of the array. The string type generation is only partially
+ implemented. If choosing string you must select a size of 'var'.
+ </p>
+
+<p align="justify">
+ The Java records are regenerated each time the record generator is
+ run, however the test stubs are only created if the test stub does
+ not already exist. What this means is that you may change test
+ stubs but not the generated records.
+ </p>
+
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+<br>
+
+<div align="right">
+<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" border="0" width="99%">
+<tr>
+<td bgcolor="#525D76"><font color="#ffffff" size="+0"><font face="Arial,sans-serif"><b>How it Works</b></font></font></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>
+<br>
+
+<p align="justify">
+ The record generation works by taking an XML file and styling it
+ using XLST. Given that XSLT is a little limited in some ways it was
+ necessary to add a little Java code to the mix.
+ </p>
+
+<p align="justify">
+ See record.xsl, record_test.xsl, FieldIterator.java,
+ RecordUtil.java, RecordGenerator.java
+ </p>
+
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+<br>
+
+<div align="right">
+<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" border="0" width="99%">
+<tr>
+<td bgcolor="#525D76"><font color="#ffffff" size="+0"><font face="Arial,sans-serif"><b>Limitations</b></font></font></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>
+<br>
+
+<p align="justify">
+ The record generator does not handle all possible record types and
+ is not ment to. Sometimes it's going to make more sense to generate
+ the records manually. The main point of this thing is to make the
+ easy stuff simple.
+ </p>
+
+<p align="justify">
+ Currently the record generator is optimized to create Excel records.
+ It could be adapted to create Word records with a little poking
+ around.
+ </p>
+
+<p align="justify">
+ Currently the the XSL file that generates the record calls out to
+ Java objects. This would have been better done as Javascript inside
+ the XSL file itself. The Java code for the record generation is
+ currently quite messy with minimal comments.
+ </p>
+
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+<br>
+
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+<br>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" width="100%">
+<tr>
+<td>
+<hr size="1" noshade="">
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="center"><font color="#525D76" size="-1" face="arial,helvetica,sanserif"><i>
+ Copyright ©2002 Apache Software Foundation
+ </i></font></td><td width="5%" align="right"><img src="images/cocoon2-small.jpg" align="right" border="0" vspace="0" hspace="0"></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</body>
+</html>
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