title: Uncompress OpenOffice files for better storage in version control
body: <p>I've heard discussion about how OpenOffice (ODF) files are compressed zip files of XML and other data. So making a tiny change to the file can potentially totally change the data, so delta compression doesn't work well in version control systems.</p>
  
  <p>I've done basic testing on an OpenOffice file, unzipping it and then rezipping it with zero compression. I used the Linux zip utility for my testing. OpenOffice will still happily open it.</p>
  
  <p>So I'm wondering if it's worth developing a small utility to run on ODF files each time just before I commit to version control. Any thoughts on this idea? Possible better alternatives?</p>
  
  <p>Secondly, what would be a good and robust way to implement this little utility? Bash shell that calls zip (probably Linux only)? Python? Any gotchas you can think of? Obviously I don't want to accidentally mangle a file, and there are several ways that could happen.</p>
  
  <p>Possible gotchas I can think of:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Insufficient disk space</li>
  <li>Some other permissions issue that prevents writing the file or temporary files</li>
  <li>ODF document is encrypted (probably should just leave these alone; the encryption probably also causes large file changes and thus prevents efficient delta compression)</li>
  </ul>