Older blog entries for frob (starting at number 18)

C0relDraw VS Visi0
The process of CDR file format reverse engineering seems to be more clear and quick than it was for VSD/VSS.
Possible reasons for that are:
- format of their containers
- LZW implementation in use
- 'object models'
- code for file format research

CDR uses (slightly modified) RIFF with standard LZW. Also there are clearly identifiable pointers to 'document-wise' parts like fills and outlines parameters.

VSD uses OLE with 'customized' LZW version. There are a lot of entities there (I had ever asked native speakers to suggest some good names for different kind of 'peaces'). The relations mostly aren't clear.

A lot of time was wasted to find out LZW options (VSD). cdr_explorer (and therefore sK1 importer) uses zlib functions (CDR).

RIFF leaves some place to guess about chunk content because of meaningful names (<obj >, <DISP>, <IKEY>, <bmp >, <fntd> can you guess what it is?).
In VSD _some_ parts of 'Visio Document Object Model' can be found from the 'type value in the pointer to stream', also one have to map chunk numbers to types.

For vsd/vss I stole some code from libgsf, but my ability to adapt it is quite restricted. And I gave up all attempts to make something useful in C with GObject.
For cdr Igor Novikov made a cdr_explorer, that is really nice and handy.

So there are some details about the formats:
vsd and cdr (WARNING! Coarse (Russian) language. Viewer discretion is advised! =)

For now CDR files (ver.7 to ver. X3) can be opened in sK1. Igor Novikov is going to make two presentations about it at LGM-2

What could be my next target?
Well... there are some things to research in CDR ;-)
And show-stopper is not me (there are no more cdr files prepared to make meaningful conclusions.) Maybe or maybe not we will complete most of this job at LGM-2.

Alexandre Prokoudine suggested that it could be interesting to dig into photoshop related formats.
Jody pointed to PPT.
So I'm encouraging Igor Novikov to extend cdr_explorer with support for OLE.
It will help us to finish with VSD/VSS (and maybe create some kind of viewer
for a time while Ian Redfern implement VSD->..->Dia convertor)
and provide a base for possible treatment of PPT.
I would rather work with PPT because I know who will be responsible for utilization of the collected data =).
And I believe that nobody really need any data about PSD format and related staff.

vsdump
vsdump team is double-sized. Max Kosmach makes some patches here and there,
he also forces me to make vsdump output more close to VDX.

svudump will be renamed
sK1 team asked me to include svudump to their code.
After quick consultation with svu, I need to rename this code to something.
Igor Novikov (sK1) suggested a 'cdr_thumbnail'.
Accidently 'cdr' isn't only C0relDr@w file format, but also widely used for 'compact disk [recordable]'.

LGM-2007
I'm going to attend LGM2 in Montreal this May.

ELT started today. Thanks to JIAS and Jewish community.

It seems to be quite difficult to improve vsdump more w/o at least "indirect access through experienced user" to Visio2k2 or 2k3. So I'm going to make some version of VSD/VSS viewer based on gtk+ or gnome.

Stencils for Dia or Kivio
If you want to use some Visio stencil(s) under Dia or Kivio, you need to convert it.
For help with conversion of stencils of version 6 (visio2k and visio2k2) and 11 (visio2k3) you can use vsdump.

Most of 'commercial' stencils made of a set of WMF and/or EMF files.
While vsdump can't convert VSS directly to Dia or Kivio stencil, it can extract all those WMF/EMFs.
It's not quite easy to preview WMF/EMFs (e.g. EOG doesn't support this), so vsdump extracts an icons of 'Masters' and saves them in .ICO files.

Slightly tired with VSD/VSS reverse engineering,
I made a small utility to dump bitmap preview from CorelDraw files.
It's easy, so I would like somebody implement similar functionality in EOG or gthumb.

Dear Lazy Web

One commercial software file format stores some raster images (icons) in the format described below:

Offset Length Value
2. . . . . 2. . . . . Width (always 0x20?)
4. . . . . 2. . . . . Height (always 0x20?)
8. . . . . 4. . . . . Size of file
0xE . . . . . . . . . start of transparency 'list'
[right after end of transperency] start of points colors

The start is in the left bottom corner.
Transparency: 1 bit per point
Points: 4 bits for color encoding

It utilizes some kind of RLE algorithm, so if
most significant bit of L=1 -- repeat next byte L&127 times
most significant bit of L=0 -- read L&127 bytes 'literally'.
----

May be you can recognize it as some well-known format?

Example:
00 00
20 00 (Width)
20 00 (Height)
16 00 00 00 (Size)
00 00 ???
02 c0 03 (2 most signif bits in the 1st byte and 2 least signif bits in the 2nd bytes are transparent)
FE 00 (next 7e*8 bits are opaque)
/because transparency was described for all points next bytes are colors/
08 FF 99 FF 99 99 FF 99 FF (2 white /in real transparent/, 2 red /color 9/, 2 white, 2 red points; 2 red, 2 white, 2 red, 2white /transparent again/ points)
FF AA (7f*2 green /color A/ points)
FF AA (7f*2 green /color A/ points)
FF AA (7f*2 green /color A/ points)
FB AA (7b*2 green /color A/ points)
end of file

vsdump
I was wondered by the #inkscape ppl reaction on my question about Visio VSD/VSS files support.
It seems to be right not to bother them with info about CDR too...

Wacom Graphire2
Yesterday I lost some time in attempts to configure my Wacom Graphire2
on reinstalled system with 2.6 kernel.
While it worked fine in console, in xorg it wasn't.
As a last resort I tried to change /dev/input/event0 to /dev/input/event1. It's The Solution.

So I have 2 questions:
1. How system assigns devices to /dev/<something>?
2. How to determine (command/utils/place in the 'cat <something>') which dev-id was assigned to the device?
At least when I used to configure /dev/input/event0 there was no any 'no such device' messages.

CISSP
I have passed CISSP competency examination!
Now I need to submit some documents (CV and endorcement) and wait for my certificate =)
Jen (aka Furry) have passed it too.

Newcomer
My friend is looking for Information Security related job in the Toronto area.
It's a resume in pdf

"GnomeMeeting VTA"
I collected and analysed additional data about Cisco VTA and 'CAST' (as ethereal dissect it) protocol.

What is 'Advantage' (as the 'A' in a 'CVTA') means?

If one has already installed Cisco IP telephony, then it can be easy and 'chiply' extended with videotelephony capabilities. The extension includes slightly modified Logitech webcam (cisco logo, different usb id, possibly some other code in the cam firmware) and some software. This 'bundle' is about twice+ in price of the same regular Logitech webcam. Software is win32-only.
To install you need attach webcam to usb-port on your computer and switch on video for your IP-phone (7940 and more powerfull models) in the CCM (CallManager -- Cisco IP PBX) configuration. When somebody with videophone capabilities calls you by IP phone, CVTA-client brings up and setup videocall. So you are looking on screen and speak/listen with phone handset/handsfree.

Technical side.

CVTA client uses CDP (cisco discovery protocol) to learn IP-address of IP phone your computer connected to. CVTA client setups TCP connection to phone and uses 'CAST' to exchange information about line/call state. As part of this information CVTA receives IP-address of calling party and setups videocall (H.323, RTCP + RTP).

The idea is to add something (support of CAST?) to GnomeMeeting and replace CVTA with GM. I'm trying to read some unix network programming books at present ;-)

Why?

"GM advantage" would be able to work with about any webcam

"GM advantage" would be able to work on OSes supported by GM

So there is some 'market' to share ;-) Additionaly such a plug-in (which extract info about calling party phone number/name) can be used as the base for CTI extensions (for example, bring up an evolution window with last e-mail received/sent to calling person).

Juniper
About a month after examination I received my JNCIS-M certificate.