LAOLA file system, history

# LAOLA file system

## History

Development of the Laola project.

Sep/19/97, meantime release, Laola files only

- Alles neu macht der Herbst.
- New: Laola now is a perl 5 project. laola.pl is split into several modules into a Laola:: hierarchie.

Jun/30/97, fifth release, last release in perl 4!

- Generally: Laola project is now maintained with means of rcs. Do not wonder about the strange tags everywhere in the files beginnings...
- Generally: Laola distribution now is traded as a whole (as zip file). Further more I included, sigh, an installation program.
- laola.pl:
  - Added: laola_open_document now supports a buffer. This can be used very kindly to support streams. This was funny a bit, because it is the first useful thing to do with all this "cache" code I've written. Idea by Tomi Ollila. Thanks!
  - Fixed: trash handling: small blocks trash had not been reported.
  - Fixed: properties: it could happen, that values from another document were returned.
- Demonstration programs:
  - lclean! laola.pl did not report small block trash correctly. Therefore the "hidden" file structure is no more compatible to that of release four!
  - lhalw: now understands fastsave format for Word 6 and 7. Changed the file name endings of the created files from "asc" to "txt". This because ASCII defines only 7 bit of a character, but lhalw of course uses 8 bit ISO 8859-1. Cleaned up a little bit. Width of output can now be regulated (thanks again to Tomi!).
- Applications: new.
  - Elser: new. A program to handle Word documents. Features password resolving, macro decoding and deletion, a little bit virus detection, a first approximation of a word 6/7 binary document structure map, some first information about Johann Georg Elser.

Mar/23/97, fourth release, still experimentary

- laola.pl:
  - New IO engine, several times faster.
  - Property storages are now loaded dynamically when the document contains huge numbers of embedded objects.
  - Improved property support. Now dictionaries, arrays and user customized properties can be handled. Some more variable types are now supported, some old are corrected. Thanx to Loris Caren for hint and support.
- Demonstration programs:
  - All: Fixed some problems with pathes. Thanx to David Seidman.
  - ldat: Added code for array handling for -d "debug" mode.
  - lhalw: Now gives a little info, when trouble while converting.

Mar/09/97, third release

- This history file
- "How to obtain perl" info
- laola.pl:
  - Quick Reference
  - Improved reading functionality, especially offset handling.
  - First writing function, enables to modify file entries.
  - Read and write access to trash sections
- Demonstration programs:
  - Programs guess if unix or dos system, so manual changes should be no longer necessary.
  - A "-o <file>" option is now available for every program. Standard output will be redirected then to <file>.
  - Now a public available document is chosen for sample outputs. Thanx to Dave Quecke for idea.
  - lclean: New, cleans trash in documents.
  - ldat: Added some Excel support.

Jan/02/97, second release

- laola.pl:
  - Basic support of property sets. This made ldat understandable.
- Demonstration programs:
  - Sample output for ldat and lls

Nov/30/96, first release

- Hacking guide, explaining the basic structure of OLE binary documents
- Perl package ("library") laola.pl, featuring mainly:
  - reading directory structure
  - reading files
- Demonstration programs:
  - lls: New, lists internal file structure of OLE documents.
  - ldat: New, lists SummaryInformation properties.
  - lhalw: New, reads the text chunk out of Word 6 style documents.

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