OpenOffice and cvs

I use OpenOffice at home for my word processing and spreadsheet needs. I often like to keep such documents under version control using cvs. One of the features of cvs that I have found very useful in the past is keyword substitution: version control information can be included in the document under version control so that for example the version number can be seen in the actual document. It works by including special text (for the version number the text is '$Revision: $') in the document. When the document is checked in cvs automatically inserts the relevant value after the ':'. That's fine and dandy but unfortunately it doesn't work with binary files whereas OpenOffice uses binary.

Closer examination of the OpenOffice format reveals that a text document is in fact saved as a zipped collection of xml files. Moreover OpenOffice's word processor supports user-defined properties; from File choose Properties and select the user-defined tab. You can then put the text $Revision: $ in one of these properties as shown below:




(Actually any text could be used, but I chose $Revision: $ to be consistent with normal keyword substitution in cvs.) You can then use this property in your document by selecting Insert | Fields | Other and expand the User-Defined item to choose the one containing $Revision: $.

This still leaves the problem of how to update this value. The solution I came up with is a Python script that you invoke when checking in instead of the normal cvs checkin. You can download this script here.When you run it something like the following should appear:

[pmu@mblinux python]$ sxw_checkin.py testdoc2.sxw "Eighth version"

+++> unzip -o testdoc2.sxw meta.xml

Archive:  testdoc2.sxw

inflating: meta.xml

+++> zip testdoc2.sxw meta.xml

updating: meta.xml (deflated 56%)

+++> cvs ci -m"Eighth version" testdoc2.sxw

Checking in testdoc2.sxw;

/software/cvsroot/scripts/python/testdoc2.sxw,v  <--  testdoc2.sxw new revision: 1.8; previous revision: 1.7 done 

And hey presto! the property in the OpenOffice document has been updated (in this example it would now have the value "1.8").

Small print: I have only used the script on OpenOffice text documents so I can't say whether it works for the other tools that OpenOffice provides; please let me know if you try it!

Trip to Britain

Just returned from a very pleasant trip to Britain catching up with friends. Stayed for a few days with our friends John and Claire where John regaled me with his new joke: on learning that presidential candidate John Kerry's wife was from the Heinz family, he asked an unimpressed Claire "Do you think he will be able to ketch-up".

Turns out the joke was on me anyway: Yvonne was captivated by John and Claire's Aibo ("Milton") so that is next on our shopping list. She has even chosen a name ("Darwin").

Real Audio on a homepod

Picked up a HomePod at JavaOne a few weeks back, but I am only now finding the time to play with it. One of the things I want to do with it is to be able to listen to Real audio streams, but this is not supported in the current version of the firmware. I have a longer term goal of writing a codec for the HomePod for this format, but just now I don't have the time to delve into it so I needed a workaround.

I tried various things with some open-source audio players such as xmms and MPlayer before finally hitting on something that works, albeit in a roundabout way. I have pointed winamp at the Real audio stream and at the same time I have installed a shoutcast server and the shoutcast broadcast plugin for winamp. Winamp then redirects the Real audio stream to my shoutcast server which then makes it available on my home network as streaming mp3 - a format supported by the HomePod. Not the most elegant solution, but it works. If anyone has other ideas I'm open to suggestions.

For more details, see my home page.