Re: [office] Open Office File Format / Graphics / Draw

[Daniel Vogelheim <Daniel.Vogelheim@sun.com>]

Hi all,

I'm a bit late on this one... :-)

David Faure wrote:

>From: Dirk Schönberger <dirk.schoenberger@sz-online.de>
>My current work included some work on a import filter for Adobe Illustrator files into KOffice / Karbon.
>The import filter (written in ruby) tries to transfer the data structures from Adobe
>Illustrator into a XML like syntax, using a SAX like filter. This allows me
>to define and extend my own dataformat, as I see fit. The idea is currently
>not to implement a given file format (Karbon, OpenOffice draw or the like),
>but instead model the full feature set of Adobe Illustrator until version 8.
>
>I have uploaded some sample documents, you may find it at
>http://www.angelfire.com/realm/dschon/fillrule.xml
>http://www.angelfire.com/realm/dschon/almeria2_corel.xml
>http://www.angelfire.com/realm/dschon/logo.xml
>

Nice, and I think this is definitely worth a look for phase 2.

Just some comments:

- The main part of the data appeared to be stroke paths, which are 
constructed by path elements rather than the mangled path expressions we 
copied from SVG. I like that a little better, but would still vote for 
the SVG syntax for commonality reasons. :-)

- There appeared to be some new stuff e.g. for gradients. However, I 
couldn't make too much sense of  it, since it contained some binary-type 
data. Since we had previously agreed to approach SVG on gradients, it 
might make sense to see how such functionality maps to our SVG proposal.

- I found it a little odd that some samples contained code which was 
distinctly PostScrip-ish. I wonder whether that's a relict of an 
incomplete XML-ization of the source files, or wether that's embedded 
graphics more akin to embedded .jpg in our format.

Sincerely,
Daniel