Legacy Visio

VSD · VISIO

parseVsd returns a VsdDocument for the supported binary version 11 drawing slice. This uses legacy binary records; Microsoft MS-VSDX describes a different XML format.

Typed drawing model

pages and shapes expose real IDs, stored page dimensions/scale, explicit transforms, UTF-16 text and MoveTo/LineTo geometry.

• Version 11 only; unsupported versions fail checked parsing or remain diagnostic CFB inspection in automatic parsing.
• Group/parent/master identities and unsupported geometry remain explicit; styles, masters and formulas are not evaluated.
• Compressed pointer/record traversal has input, decoded-byte, depth and record budgets.

Validated drawing order

page.topLevelShapeIds and shape.childShapeIds resolve owner-scoped ShapeList mappings, with shapeOrderIssue when order is unresolved.

• Existing shapes arrays remain flat and in physical record order for lookup compatibility; use the new IDs for drawing order and retain group context.
• Copied frozen metadata matches a native two-page group/master/style/layer fixture. Parent and local-coordinate reads are verified; inherited rendering is unresolved.
• Malformed mappings, owners and ranges remain explicit. Aggregate order elements are bounded to 100,000; this adds no native transform writer admission.

Preserving edits

Supported setters replace edited leaves at their original offsets and stored allocation sizes, retaining pointer ancestors, unknown records and other CFB streams.

• Text retains UTF-16 length and control positions; fields, shared or overlapping allocations refuse.
• Bounded compression preserves exact decoded length with no added bytes, at most 8 MiB decoded leaf/allocation and bounded token-fit search; insufficient capacity or budgets refuse atomically.
• Transform writes require an exclusive top-level literal transform with understood unit tags and no parent/master dependency.
• Literal path points are not automatically scaled or recalculated when transform dimensions change.

Evidence and limitations

Native Visio 16 accepts five production exact-length text cases and native save/reopen with only captured target text changed. A newly rejected 0.10 Jello edit exposed unsafe decoded padding; the older handcrafted fixture is also rejected despite libvisio acceptance.

• Earlier binary versions, general ShapeSheet evaluation, styles, rich text, embedded content and general drawing reconstruction remain unsupported.
• inspectLegacyVisio still validates the signature/version/TrailerStream pointer for compatible inspection layouts; inspection is separate from drawing decoding.
• Native transform, rendering and complete roundtrip parity remain unverified; formula-bearing transforms refuse.

Example

import { parseVsd } from '@christophervr/ole2';

const drawing = parseVsd(vsdBytes);
const shape = drawing.pages[0].shapes.find(shape => shape.id === 1);
shape.text = 'World\n\n'; // Native fixture stores Hello plus two LF characters.
const saved = drawing.serialize();

shape.geometrySections exposes Geometry-header record IDs, noFill, noLine, noShow flags and explicit MoveTo/LineTo/ArcTo/Ellipse rows. ArcTo includes its stored bow operand. Ellipse retains center, left and top coordinate pairs rather than computing radii or rendering a path. Section and row snapshots are detached and frozen. The existing flat shape.geometry array keeps its MoveTo/LineTo compatibility behavior. Unknown section flags and undecoded complex rows set the section's unsupported flag. Rows retain physical record order; Geometry-list order, master/style inheritance and formulas are not evaluated. These reads use libvisio's binary VSD parser as a layout reference. The owned native hierarchy fixture verifies stored row values and a hidden-section flag; generated ArcTo and Ellipse cases verify stored operands only. This adds no geometry writes or new native save/reopen evidence. Guide ownership continues to refuse rather than misattribute guide records.