Date: Thu, 31 Jul 1997 21:37:27 +0930 (CST) From: Michael Smith <msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au> To: ada@not-enough.bandwidth.org (Ada T Lim) Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: MS Word documents (was: Advice sought on PnP configuration) Message-ID: <199707311207.VAA28144@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> In-Reply-To: <199707310925.TAA08099@polya.blah.org> from Ada T Lim at "Jul 31, 97 07:25:12 pm"
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Ada T Lim stands accused of saying: > > Has anybody investigated what it would take to convert MS Word to a > > portable format? So much stuff is sent in it nowadays, even by people > > who should know better. Is it that difficult? If somebody can point > > me to some format documentation, I'm prepared to have a hack at it. > > If you _really_ need to read word files, StarOffice (in the ports collection) > will do in a pinch. Unfortunately (and to my significant disappointment) this is not the case. All of the Microsoft-sourced Word documents I have met cannot be opened by StarOffice. Oddly, those from many other vendors (eg. Compaq, Intel, etc.) can. > I think there's something out there that converts word to rtf, and I know > there's rtf->html Word itself will save in RTF format, but true to their traditions Microsoft's RTF output is sufficiently mutant that I haven't found anything (yet) that will swallow it reliably. Note that neither of these problems tend to show up with short documents, but in the case of these specifications we're usually talking > 50 pages. To answer Grog's question; there was a discussion of this very issue a while back here, and the upshot was that the one individual that had come close to deciphering the Word document format was sat on by Microsoft's lawyers. There is apparently some documentation somewhere (ref Terry, IIRC) which might allow you to read Word documents, but at the cost of your mortal soul. -- ]] Mike Smith, Software Engineer msmith@gsoft.com.au [[ ]] Genesis Software genesis@gsoft.com.au [[ ]] High-speed data acquisition and (GSM mobile) 0411-222-496 [[ ]] realtime instrument control. (ph) +61-8-8267-3493 [[ ]] Unix hardware collector. "Where are your PEZ?" The Tick [[
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