Hi
I'm just starting to use POI for generating HWPF Word documents There are two features that I need which I think should be included in POI; and since I need them I figure I might as well build them and contribute patches. I'd like to get some advice and a yea or nay before I go ahead
The first one is about RSIDs. This started with my question at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4966087/how-to-generate-rsid-attributes-correctly-in-word-docx-files-using-apache-poi
My application is generating HWPF documents which a number of user will download, edit using Word, then upload back into the system. At the moment we simply overwrite the generated document with user's changes; but it would be more useful if the application could identify what has changed. That's exactly why Word has revision identifiers (RSIDs): they identify all the changes made in one session thus making it easy to identify changes. A document created by Word is full of RSIDs, whereas a document created by POI doesn't have any.
I'd like to add the ability for POI to automatically assign RSIDs to HWPF documents. Here's a rough plan of what I'm thinking about implementing:
* Add properties to XWPFDocument that store the base RSID, all RSIDs in use the document, and a RSID being used for the current revision.
* Add appropriate methods to get, set and clear those XWPFDocument properties
* The base RSID and other RSIDs in XWPFDocument will be populated from word/settings.xml when an existing document is loaded
* The current session RSID will be randomly generated automatically when a XWPFDocument object is constructed. This means that a 'revision' will be defined as the lifetime of that instance.
* Paragraphs, runs and other content will have appropriate methods to get, set and clear the RSID
* Add a boolean property (and associated methods) that enables and disables automatic assignment of an RSID to new paragrams, runs, etc added by POI This will probably be disabled by default.
* When that boolean is enabled, any method that creates new context will automatically assign the current RSID to that content (for example XWPFDocument.createParagraph(), XWPFParagraph.createRun(), XWPFRun.setText() etc)
Does anyone have any comments on or objections to that plan? And should I put this in bugzilla?
I have another need for POI, I will write that one up in my next email...
Cheers
Charlie
