[Libwpg-devel] Fwd: SoC WPG conversion: progress as of June 5, 2006

[Ariya H. <ar...@kd...>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ariya Hidayat <ari...@gm...>
Date: Jun 5, 2006 3:38 PM
Subject: SoC WPG conversion: progress as of June 5, 2006
To: de...@wp...


Hi folks,

Here's the status so far with my Summer of Code (WPG conversion filter).

In the first week I spent time studying the WordPerfect Graphics file
format. Seems that the format is not so difficult to understand. I
tried to create few simple graphics in WordPerfect Office and examined
the hexviewed version to get a feeling of the format.

I also setup my working environment, intended to work as close as
possible with WPO (for convenience, as I'd need to
create/edit/modify/view lots of WPG files). First, I was using MinGW
so that I can work in Win32. Later on I was succesful at setting up a
virtualized Windows NT + WPO using QEMU inside my SUSE box. This is
better as Linux is my preferred development platform.

As starting point, I continue the development of libwpg with focus on
WPG2 format. As my mentor (Fridrich Strba) has expressed, removing
libgsf dependency is a good jump start so I did this. I also
implemented few important WPG records, among others for handling pen
and brush settings as well as basic shapes such as rectangle, polyline
and polygon. Difficulties come from the object characterization data,
which specifies e.g. the object transformation. Here the documentation
is not clear and sometimes also has errors, but I'm working on it.

To test the parsing routine, I also adjusted the listener class of
WPG. Typically, one would create a new class derived from this
listener and then e.g. implemented SVG output. I modified the listener
to fit better the common painting model (as used in
PostScript/Cairo/Qt) so that in the future it should be easy to create
e.g. a PDF output.

The wpg2svg conversion tool also got some love. I already implemented
stroke color, opacity, dasharray, width. Along with some basic shapes
such as line, polyline, rectangle (even with roundness), I can already
view some WPG files converted to SVG using Inkscape and Karbon.

Unfortunately so far I still work off the CVS (of libwpg). My code is
still a mess and breaks WPG1 support. Of course, merging and syncing
back the code is on my radar and I hope I can do this as soon as
possible.

Next on my plan is:
- complete the brush properties
- object characterization data, necessary for correct transformation
- adjust WPG1 code with the new listener's painting model

Regards,

Ariya Hidayat