I'm attempting to modify a Visio file (Open XML format) without having to use the Windows Visio application. My first experiment is just to use 7zip to unzip a known good .vsdx file that was created using Visio. That is all good; I can view the content of the package. Without making any modifications, I use 7zip to re-zip the content and renamed to .vsdx, but when I tried to open the resulting new file using Visio, it complains that the file is corrupt. Is there a way to manually re-zip the content into something that Visio accepts as a valid Visio file? I suspect that there may be some sort of checks for the validity of the file, but can't find what that may be. Thanks for any input.
I would use some form of OpenXML library to get at the file's guts using some sort of "approved magic".
Understanding that you might not want to do whatever you're doing via programming, I looked for some sort of free editor.
I found this free plug-in for Visual Studio:
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=bsivanov.OpenXMLPackageEditorforVisualStudio
It works in the free "Microsoft Visual Studio Community 2019" as well. I just opened the dev environment (aka: the application) and dragged a Visio .vsdx file into the app. It opened with a tree-like editor. I was able to dig down until I found the visio > pages > page1.xml "leaf". Inside there, I was able to change some text on a shape, then save the "package".
Whatever this tool does, it saves the file properly, and I was able to open the altered .vsdx file in Visio. And the text that I changed in the editor was indeed changed inside of Visio!
I think I've used this in the past:
"Welcome to the Open XML SDK 2.5 for Office"
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/open-xml/open-xml-sdk
https://github.com/OfficeDev/Open-XML-SDK
To edit Visio files without the Visio application, you'll still need to understand how Visio works, to some extent.
A simple example:
I changed the text on a shape fairly easily within one of the page.xml files. That was easy. Then I wanted to add a copy of that shape. It was simple enough to copy and paste the whole xml block for the existing shape, then change the PinX and PinY attributes to move the shape to a different location on the page.
But you won't see that shape unless you give it a unique ID within the page. I tested deleting the ID attribute (to see if Visio would figure it out on open and assign one automatically), but it didn't work. If the ID is the same as another shape, the shape is ignored when you open the file. Once I changed ID to something unused, I did see the new copy of the shape.
If you create grouped shapes, or shapes that have advanced behavior (SmartShapes, ShapeSheet formulas, etc.), then this could get complicated. As formulas need to reference other shapes by ID, so you need to manage the IDs! For simple boxes and lines, etc., it might work well (and fast) to generate these things via OpenXML. Good luck!
Related
At my place of work, we have a standard source header. I've been using snippets to generate it when adding text to a file. However, since it's supposed to be pretty much used on everything, I figure I might as well see if I can automate its generation on file creation.
Is there a way to automatically add text to a file on creation in vscode? Can I generate different text based on the file extension?
Is it possible to build a LibreOffice document from code similar to the way a web page is built from HTML and CSS? Can one write an ODF file in which the content and styling are separate, and then/view open in LibreOffice? If so, can one write the code in a text editor as done for HTML/CSS?
There area two reasons I now ask. 1) When I need to make a style change in LibreOffice I have to manually make the same adjustments in a hundred places, such as changing the style of block quotes. 2) I'd like to build documents from a database of text.
I found a question on this in relation to databases but it was about eight years old.
Thank you for any direction you may be able to provide.
Unzip an .odt file that contains styles. You will see two files, content.xml and styles.xml. Edit these files using a text editor and then zip the folder back up to get a modified .odt file.
Be aware that there are two types of styles in the XML files. Named styles are what most people think of as styles, whereas automatic styles are custom formatting, like when you select some text and change the font directly.
The link from tohuwawohu describes utilities to work programmatically with the file. Also as mentioned in the link, it's not too hard to write code yourself. For example in python, import the built-in libraries zipfile and xml.etree.
I am to create a new design (CSS & HTML) for a web site which is created using Interwoven ContentCenter Professional.
Now, I can see the existing files in CMS (Interwoven) but, I can't make changes. My changes are displayed only when I'm in edit mode. Nothing in the live page. I tried to submit, create editions of files but still no good.
How should I create or edit pages in Interwoven CMS?
Thanks.
If you're talking about generic pages, then once you are finished you have to click on the Generate option, then choose a directory and click Finish. Last thing you should do is to choose yeswhen it asks you to Re-generate the page.
What you are trying to do is just creating a new file, not generating a file from TeamSite's Formpublisher. It is just like if you are in Windows Explorer and creating a new file. In order to generate a file from a form entry, you need to be in the templatedata directory, ex: /default/main/branch1/WORKAREA/wa1/templatedata/category/type(on unix) or Y:/default/main/branch1/WORKAREA/wa1/templatedata/category/type (on Windows). There should be a file call datacapture.cfg there. There is another directory called data under the above path which stores your data content record (dcr) that are created from the form. This is the file that you can use to generate which will use the (tpl) file under the presentation directory.
I would like to create my own data format for an iPhone app. The files should be similar structured as e.g. Apple's iWork files (.pages). That means, I have a folder with some files in it:
The file 'Juicy.fruit' contains:
Fruits
---> Apple.xml
---> Banana.xml
---> Pear.xml
---> PreviewPicture.png
This folder "Fruits" should be packed in a handy file 'Juicy.fruit'. Compression isn't necessary. How could I achieve this? I've discovered some open source ZIP-libraries. However, I would like to to build my own data format with the iPhones built-in libs (if possible).
Best regards,
Stefan
Okay, so there are three ways I am reading your question, here's my best guess on each one:
You want your .fruit files to be associated with your app via Safari/SMS/some network connection (aka when someone wants to download files made for your app or made by your app).
In this case, you can register a protocol for your app, as discussed here:
iPhone file extension app association
You want the iPhone to globally associate .fruit files with your app, in which case you want to look into Uniform Type Identifiers. Basically, you set up this association in your installer's info.plst file.
You want to know how you can go from having a folder with files in it to that folder being a single file (package) with your .fruit extension.
If that's the case, there are many options out there and I don't see a purpose in rolling your own. Both Microsoft and Adobe simply use a standard zip compression method and use their own extension (instead of .zip). If you drop any office 2007 document, such as docx or Adobe's experimental .pdfxml file into an archive utility (I like 7z, but any descent one will do), you will get a folder with several xml files, just like you're describing for your situation. (This is also how Java's jar file type works, fyi). So unless you have a great reason to avoid standard compression methods (I vote gzip), I would follow the industry lead on this one.
I can definitly appreciate the urge to go DIY at every level possible, but you're basically asking (if it's #3) how you can create your own packaging algorithm, and after reading how some of the most basic compression methods work, I would leave that one alone. Plus I really doubt that Apple has built in libraries for doing something that most people will just use standard methods for.
One last note:
If you are really gunning to do it from scratch (still suggest not), since your files are all XML, you could just create a new XML file that will act as a wrapper of sorts, and have each file go into that wrapper file. But this would be really redundant when it came time to unwrap, as it would have to load the whole file every time. But it would be something like:
Juicy.fruit --
<fruit-wrapper>
<fruit>
<apple>
... content from apple.xml
</apple>
</fruit>
<fruit>
<banana>
... content from banana.xml
</banana>
</fruit>
<fruit>
<pear>
... content from pear.xml
</pear>
</fruit>
<picture>
...URL-encoded binary of preview picture
</picture>
</fruit-wrapper>
But with this idea, you either have to choose to unpack it, and thus risk losing track of the files, overwriting some but not all, etc etc, or you always treat it like one big file, in which case, unlike with archives, you have to load all of the data each time to pull anything out, instead of just pulling the file you want from the archive.
But it could work, if you're determined.
Also, if you are interested, there is a transfer protocol intended specifically for XML over mobile called WBXML (Wap Binary XML). Not sure if it is still taken seriously, but if there is an iPhone library for it, you should research it.
Some people want to see the DB structure and dont have VS, is there a way to do this? Or any other way to export it outside of a screencapture (it is a huge diagram).
Thank you.
You can right click on the design surface and select Diagram -> Export as Image and you get the entire edmx model generated as bmp
This doesn't really work on large diagrams. Oh it exports it, but on a large diagram, once you zoom in, all text is nothing but pixels. It's a logged bug, but right now Microsoft is not planning on fixing this issue.
What I've done is downloaded a pdf printer (like Bullzip free edition), then just "print" the document to pdf.
To Viso, no. I have yet to find a way to export this to Visio.
There is a PDF generation solution (suitable if you have large diagrams) :
You can do it from Visual Studio :
File > Print
Send it to OneNote or choose PDF.