Overview
HDGF is the POI Project's pure Java implementation of the
Visio binary (VSD) file format. XDGF is the POI Project's
pure Java implementation of the Visio XML (VSDX) file format.
Currently, HDGF provides a low-level, read-only api for
accessing Visio documents. It also provides a
way
to extract the textual content from a file.
At this time, there is no usermodel 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
vsdump
to get a feel for how Visio files are structured.
To get a feel for the contents of a file, and to track down
where data of interest is stored, HDGF comes with
VSDDumper
to print out the contents of the file. Users should also make
use of
vsdump
to probe the structure of files.
This code currently lives the
scratchpad area
of the POI Git repository. To use this component, ensure
you have the Scratchpad Jar on your classpath, or a dependency
defined on the poi-scratchpad artifact - the main POI
jar is not enough! See the
POI Components Map
for more details.
Steps required for write support
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.
- Re-write the decompression support in LZW4HDGF as
HDGFLZW, which will be much better documented, and also
under the ASL. Completed October 2007
- Add compression support to HDGFLZW.
In progress - works for small streams but encoding
goes wrong on larger ones
- Have HDGF just write back the raw bytes it read in, and
have a test to ensure the file is un-changed.
- 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.
- 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.
- Have HDGF re-generate the offsets in pointers for the
locations of the streams. Plus test to ensure file is
un-changed.
- 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
- Alter the data of one command, but keep it the same
length, and check visio can open the file when written
out.
- Alter the data of one command, to a new length, and
check that visio can open the file when written out.