[ILUG] Star Office#

[Braun Brelin]

Assuming that you're talking about the .doc proprietary format, I got this
information by reading some stuff by Caolan McNamara on how he went about
writing the conversion software.  He mentioned (as I recall), how they had
encrypted certain parts of the file and dumped their runtime DS's.

The article is here:
http://www.skynet.ie/~caolan/Packages/wvDecrypt.html

Perhaps Caolan would like to explicate further.  :-)

Braun


> On Thu, Jun 02, 2005 at 04:32:29PM +0100, Braun Brelin wrote:
>> I'm not sure that's entirely correct.  The reason that the MS file
>> formats
>> aren't transparent is that they encrypt the data.  They also dump their
>> runtime data structures into the .doc/xls/etc. file.  If the file is
>> XML,
>> even though it's damn hard to understand, some smart person (or some
>> person with too much time on his/her hands) should be able to reverse
>> engineer things so that a schema or dtd can be published...
>>
>> Right?
>
> um, i don't think so.
>
> they're in a format - just not xml.  i want to say ole, but i'm sure
> caolan or someone like that can explain more.  and they aren't encrypted.
> and bits of memory left in the file are just left over from padding out
> structures and the like.
>
> i think on a general level the format is as well documented as xml.  how
> to parse ole is understood - it's just what the semantics of various
> tags and structures are supposed to mean while reading and which ones to
> generate when writing - those aren't as well documented.
>
> oh, and i think some aspects of microsoft's use of xml are patented.
>
> http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050324233749913
>
> kevin
>
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> kevin lyda ~ dems for torture: salazar(co/10) landrieu(la/08) pryor(ar/08)
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>   as torture are enablers, if not collaborators.  --Bob Herbert, 2/11/04
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