Re: Open Packaging Format creator/manager for OS X

I'm looking for an Open Packaging Format creator/manager for OS X.

Specfically, I'm trying to generate dynamic .docx files, which is going pretty well, but I'm not able to repackage the edited files without blowing up Word... any rel(s), image, or XML file in the package that I change (other than the document.xml itself) is seen as corrupt by Word when it tries to open the file. Sure enough, Word is clever enough to recover the remaining elements, but anything I change gets nuked.

That prevents me from swapping in new images (charts in my case), or modifying any hyperlinks (which exist in .rel files).

I found that I can open up a .docx file directly in Stuffit Archive Manager (SAM) (without even having to change the extension), which eliminates the need to re-zip the .docx files from scratch (which seems to blow my entire document when I try). Using SAM, I can extract only the file I choose, edit it, put it back, and the other elements remain intact.

The key problem appears to be the compression technique: the docx isn't actually a Plain Old Zip (POZ) file, it's actually an Open Packaging Convention (OPC) file:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Packaging_Conventions

Now, if I could only find an OPC creator/manager for the Mac... a GUI would be great, but a command line would do as well. I seemed to have found what at first appeared such a tool, but it doesn't seem to do anything except manage MacPorts:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/32608

FYI, Porticus needs MacPorts installed as well:
http://www.macports.org/install.php

However, I can't seem to see how Porticus helps me with the OPC file management... I'm probably on a wild turkey chase with that, but there might be something there.

I'm guessing that there are Mac developers here more informed than me, hoping someone can shed light on my OPC requirements.

thanks in advance, folks.

Install a PC emulator over your Mac system ,and use a "docx manager" that you called so for windows such as the tools come with the SDK.

Hi Cameron,

In terms of the Open Packaging convention, you may want to refer to the Open Packaging Convention documentation for details - there may be some way that your document/package structure isn't what Word expects.

As for an Open Packaging utility for Mac OS X, the closest thing I know of is that we are releasing a simple Objective-C application to OpenXMLDeveloper.org before November, which opens an OpenXML document and displays several properties. (The release will be announced via Twitter.) This is targeted towards the iPhone, but I understand you may be able to extract the parts that read the document and port that to the Mac.

Once you've got that working, you should be able to work out the process in reverse to save documents, or at least find out where your current code is going wrong.

Hope this helps.
-Daniel