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<document>
 <header>
  <title>Apache POI - HWPF - Java API to Handle Microsoft Word Files</title>
  <subtitle>Overview</subtitle>
  <authors>
   <person name="Nicola Ken Barozzi" email="barozzi@nicolaken.com"/>
   <person name="Andrew C. Oliver" email="acoliver@apache.org"/>
   <person name="Ryan Ackley" email="sackley@apache.org"/>
   <person name="Rainer Klute" email="klute@apache.org"/>
  </authors>
 </header>

 <body>
 <section><title>Overview</title>

  <p>HWPF is the name of our port of the Microsoft Word 97(-2007) file format
    to pure Java. It also provides limited read only support for the older
    Word 6 and Word 95 file formats.</p>

  <p>The partner to HWPF for the new Word 2007 .docx format is <em>XWPF</em>.
    Whilst HWPF and XWPF provide similar features, there is not a common
    interface across the two of them at this time.</p>

  <p>HWPF is still in early development. It is in the <link
     href="http://svn.apache.org/viewcvs.cgi/poi/trunk/src/scratchpad/">
     scratchpad section of the SVN.</link> You will need to ensure you
     either have a recent SVN checkout, or a recent SVN nightly build
     (including the scratchpad jar!)</p>

    <p>
        Source code in the
        <em>org.apache.poi.hdf</em>
        tree is the old legacy code. Source in the
        <em>org.apache.poi.hwpf.model</em>
        tree is the old legacy code refactored into an new object model. Those packages contains
        Java representation of internal Word format structure. This code is "internal", it shall not
        be used by your code. Because of backward-compatibility some API still has references to
        those packages. They are subject to be deprecated and removed. Code from
        <em>org.apache.poi.hwpf.usermodel</em>
        package is actual public and user-friendly (as much as possible) API to access document
        parts. Source code in the
        <em>org.apache.poi.hwpf.extractor</em>
        tree is a wrapper of this to facilitate easy extraction of interesting things (eg the Text),
        and
        <em>org.apache.poi.hwpf.converter</em>
        package contains Word-to-HTML and Word-to-FO converters (latest can be used to generate PDF
        from Word files when using with
        <link href="http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/">Apache FOP</link>
        ). Also there is a small file-structure-dumping utility in
        <em>org.apache.poi.hwpf.dev</em>
        package, primally for developing purposes.
    </p>

    <p>
        The main entry point to HWPF is HWPFDocument. Currently it has a lot of references both to
        internal interfaces (
        <em>org.apache.poi.hwpf.model</em>
        package) and public API (
        <em>org.apache.poi.hwpf.usermodel</em>
        ) package. It is possible that it will be split into two different interfaces (like WordFile
        and WordDocument) in later versions.
    </p>

    <p>Word document can be considered as very long single text buffer. HWPF API provides "pointers"
        to document parts, like sections, paragraphs and character runs. Usually user will iterates
        over main document part sections, paragraphs from sections and character runs from
        paragraph. Each such interface is a pointer to document text subrange along with additional
        properties (and they all extends same Range parent class). There is additional Range
        implementations like Table, TableRow, TableCell, etc. Some structures like Bookmark or Field
        can also provide subranges pointers.
    </p>

    <p>Changing file content usually requires a lot of synchronized changes in those structures like
        updating property boundaries, position handlers, etc. Because of that HWPF API shall be
        considered as not thread safe. In addition, there is a "one pointer" rule for changing
        content. It means you should not use two different Range instances at one time. More
        precisely, if you are changing file content using some range pointer, all other range
        pointers except parents' ones become invalid. For example if you obtain overall range (1),
        paragraph range (2) from overall range and character run range (3) from paragraph range and
        change text of paragraph, character run range is now invalid and should not be used, but
        overall range pointer still valid. Each time you obtaining range (pointer) new instance is
        created. It means if you obtained two range pointers and changed document text using first
        range pointer, second one became invalid.
    </p>

   </section>
   <section>
    <title>XWPF Patches Required!</title>

    <p>At the moment, XWPF covers many common use cases for reading and writing
     .docx files. Whilst this is a great thing, it does mean that XWPF does
     everything that the current POI committers need it to do, and so none of
     the committers are actively adding new features.</p>

    <p>If you come across a feature in XWPF that you need, and isn't currently 
     there, please do send in a patch to add the extra functionality! More details
     on contributing patches are available on the <link
      href="../guidelines.html">"Contribution to POI" page</link>.</p>
   </section>

   <section>
    <title>HWPF Pointman Needed!</title>

    <p>At the moment we unfortunately do not have someone taking care for HWPF
     and fostering its development. What we need is someone to stand up, take
     this thing under his hood as his baby and push it forward. Ryan Ackley,
     who put a lot of effort into HWPF, is no longer on board, so HWPF is an
     orphan child waiting to be adopted.</p>

    <p>If <strong>you</strong> are interested in becoming the new HWPF
     pointman, you should look into the Microsoft Word internals. A good
     starting point seems to be Ryan Ackley's  <link
      href="docoverview.html">overview</link>. Full details on the word format
     is available from 
     <link href="http://www.microsoft.com/interop/docs/OfficeBinaryFormats.mspx">Microsoft</link>,
     but the documentation can be a little hard to get into at first... Try reading the
     <link href="docoverview.html">overview</link> first, and looking at the existing
     code, then finally look up the documentation for specific missing features.</p>

    <p>As a first step you should familiarize yourself with the source code,
     examples, test cases, and the HWPF patches available at <link
      href="http://issues.apache.org/">Bugzilla</link> (if any). Then you
     should compile an overview of</p>

    <ul>
     <li>the current HWPF status,</li>
     <li>the patches in <link
       href="http://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/">Bugzilla</link> to be checked
      in (and those that should better be ditched),</li>
     <li>the available test cases and the test cases still to be written,</li>
     <li>the available documentation and the docs to be written,</li>
     <li>anything else that seems reasonable</li>
    </ul>

    <p>When you start coding, you will not yet have write access to the
     SVN repository. Please submit your patches to <link
      href="http://issues.apache.org/">Bugzilla</link> and nag <link
      href="mailto:dev@poi.apache.org">the dev list</link> until someone commits
     them. Besides the actual checking in of HWPF patches, current POI
     committers will also do some minor reviews now and then of your source code 
     patches, test cases and documentation to help ensure software quality. But 
     most of the time you will be on your own. However, anyone offering useful
     contributions over a period of time will be offered committership!</p>

    <p>Please do not forget to write <link
      href="http://www.junit.org/">JUnit</link> test cases and documentation!
     We won't accept code that doesn't come with test cases. And please
     consider that other contributors should be able to understand your source
     code easily. If you need any help getting started with JUnit test cases
     for HWPF, please ask on the developers' mailing list! If you show that you
     are prepared to stick at it you will most likely be given SVN commit
     access. See <link href="../guidelines.html">"Contribution to POI" page</link>
     for more details and help getting started.</p>

    <p>Of course we will help you as best as we can. However, presently there
     is no committer who is really familiar with the Word format, so you'll be
     mostly on your own. We are looking forward for you and your contributions!
     Honor and glory of becoming a POI committer are waiting!</p>
   </section>
 </body>
</document>

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