Architecture Documents - XML rendering process

[ahmedqasim81]

Welcome beginner. Please answer all of the questions below which may provide information necessary to answer your question.
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Which version of OpenOffice.org are you using?
What Operating System (version) are you using?
What is your question or comment?

How can I get the architecture documents for the open office?

[sybille]

Do you mean something like this?
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Architecture

[ahmedqasim81]

yes but a more generalized one and also where its shown that how does open office process a document.I mean does it interpret the document and make XML file and read it or what is the mechanism.to make it simple..WHAT ARE THE MAJOR MODULES THAT PROCESS A DOCUMENT..
Thanks for ur previous reply.

[sybille]

I'd still think that the wiki is your best bet. For example:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wik ... pers_Guide

Maybe someone else will have another idea, although it's not exactly a question for this section of the forum, i.e. "Beginners"....

[TerryE]

How can I get the architecture documents for the open office?

I don't know, but if you find any then post their references here.

I have taken apart some are of the code in detail, for example I only know of a couple of people, one in Sun and one in Novell that understand the Basic RTS more than I do. But documentation, no. You read the source, and that's a surreal experience for me because whilst the variable names use English naming, what comments that do exist are in German. I am not saying that such documents were never created, only that this code base started development about 14 years ago. The only reference document that mirrors the code is the code, and that any architectural specifications have been abandoned as obsolete as the product evolved. What you do find are specifications of changes, but these are based on an axiomatic assumption of some baseline version.

To be fairly to OOo, I track the source of a few other open source products and I see the pattern repeated. At best you find Doxygen, Javadoc or Pod material in the source, but apart from that ... I sometime wonder if MSOffice is a similar mess, but just better hidden because MS doesn't release its code.

The other tool that is absolutely essential if you want to get to grips with any areas is a build compiled with debug so that you can step through and analyse what is going on dynamically.

[ahmedqasim81]

heye that was a comprehensive reply.But can you help me with your experience about how open office processes a document while it opens it and shows it to the screen. I mean does it interpret the document and make it into xml and show the first page while it is processing the rest or is their another mechanism. I am at the moment only interested in the big picture..IF SOMEONE CAN HELP..

[TerryE]

No this one is an easy one. OOo embeds a standard XML transform engine. The container file is unzipped and transformed into internal structures on the fly. It, or at least the initial view is then rendered onto the display. The reverse occurs with save. So it the parse fails on load your file is unreadable. If the parse fails on save, you lose your doc, unless you have a backup. There are some rare bugs in OOo where this happens.

So no, it's not like PDF view which slipstreams these activities.

[ahmedqasim81]

can you please post a link that supplies the whole process that you mentioned..I am sure this is the big picture..like what is the overall process..

thanks to everybody..

[TerryE]

ahmed, please remember my earlier post. I only understand this because a few months ago another user posted a question about why importing rich text with certain superscript parameters caused File Save to crater. This intrigued me so I spent some hours going through the save code statically and dynamically. There is no link. It's not written down. Your two main research tools are http://lxr.go-oo.org/ and http://download.openoffice.org/2.4.0/source.html

Sorry