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List:       koffice
Subject:    Re: another suggestion for writing new filters
From:       Werner Trobin <trobin () kde ! org>
Date:       2002-07-08 8:15:29
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On Monday 08 July 2002 09:47, Thomas Zander wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 07, 2002 at 11:17:03PM +0200, Marco Zanon wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > since KOffice 1.3 is going to move towards OpenOffice format at 
> > least for KWord, I tell you all an idea that I already exposed to 
> > David Faure some weeks ago (he didn't like it very much :).
> > 
> > Since we would have to rewrite the filters from scratch or the 
> > like, why not changing the idea behind them and create simple 
> > command-line programs, instead of libraries?
> > We could have, for instance:
> > word97-2-openwriter
> > rtf-2-openwriter
> > wp-2-openwriter
> > and so on... Those filters would return the converted file to 
> > stdout, and that would be read by KWord.
> > 
> > My idea is to group those filters into an external project 
> > (hosted by Sourceforge?).
> > 
> > The advantages:
> > a) filters made this way would be simpler to create, even for 
> > beginners (like I am: I'm not saying that creating an actual 
> > KWord filter is impossible, but a simple command line application 
> > is better :)
> 
> Have you ever tried it? Its really easy to create a KOffice filter
> the framework is quite good, the hard part is the logic behind it,
> but that has to be done anyway.
> If you want you can simply use debug statements to print your stream
> if you want, no difference in logic there..

I'd be interested to hear about problems with the framework (you can download 
a dummy filter from http://www.koffice.org/filters/faq.phtml where you can 
also find the description what to do with all that Makefile.am and .desktop 
files, the direct link is http://www.koffice.org/filters/template.tar.gz).

As soon as you set up that template I'd also be interested in problems and 
limitations of the filter API and/or problems with the documentation.
Right now the only problem I see is that one isn't able to get hold of the 
"real" URL of a file on a remote machine, as the filter only sees the 
temporary file location. This can be a problem if your file to convert 
references other parts of the document (e.g. externally stored images) using 
relative links.

<thinking aloud>
David: IIRC KoDocument's url should hold that address, so we could somehow 
provide a way to query this information from the filter. Hmm, there are some 
ugly boundary cases with filter chains and temporary documents... let's see 
if I can fix that after the exam.
</thinking aloud>

Ciao,
Werner
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