future gnoffice reference (mswordview 0.4.0 released)

[Todd Graham Lewis <tlewis mindspring net>]

Someone might want to file this away for when we want to import word
docs into gnoffice.  Making it a baboon-accessible service would be nifty.

ANFSCD: Here's a metaphysical question for people to answer: if you were
to take netscape's NPL-licensed html->postscript code and turn it into a
CORBA service, could you call that service from an incompatibly-licensed
program?  What if your ORB actually linked the service into your address
space?  What if it didn't but the effect is the same as if it did?
I don't think that these issues have been thought through very thoroughly,
and it's starting to worry me.  Linking is a technical happenstance,
and yet it is the cornerstone of most free licensing schemes.

--
Todd Graham Lewis            32°49'N,83°36'W          (800) 719-4664, x2804
******Linux******         MindSpring Enterprises      tlewis@mindspring.net

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 12:43:27 GMT
From: Caolan McNamara <Caolan.McNamara@ul.ie>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.announce
Subject: mswordview 0.4.0 released
Followup-To: comp.os.linux.misc

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----


yes the best thing since sliced bread, the ongoing office98 word
format to html conversion project has notched up another few victories.

changes since last announced version are basically

many many many bug fixes.
improved lists.
vastly improved header and footer support.
section support.
page numbering styles support.
improved handling of hyperlink fields.
and....
prelinary support for graphics !, yep given a gif/jpg/png inserted
via the insert->picture->from file mechanism, mswordview can to date
successfully find its way to outputting a graphic, though this feature
is very alpha and based upon more that a little bit of guesswork.

further work will be in the area of images, endnotes, better table handling,
text colours and some cunning use of html to optionally attempt to hold onto
word's layout. 

C.

lsm follows, mswordview has just been uploaded to sunsite.unc.edu. 
mswordview can been got at http://www.csn.ul.ie/~caolan/docs/MSWordView.html
and http://www.gnu.org/~caolan/docs/MSWordView.html


Begin3
Title:          mswordview  MS Word Decoder
Version:        0.4.0
Entered-date:   110998
Description:    mswordview is a program that can understand 
                the microsoft word 8 binary file format (office97), 
                it currently converts word into html, which can then 
                be read with a browser. 
                Features include
                    1) ability to understand fastsaved files as well as
                       non-fastsaved files.
                    2) conversion of word header paragraph styles into 
                       appropiate header levels of html
                    3) conversion of symbol and wingding font into gif
                       images.
                    3) conversion of font attributes such as italic,
                       bold, underline, subscript, superscript and font size 
                       into html tags
                    4) conversion of word tables into html tables.
                    5) conversion of lists and multilevel lists.
                    6) conversion of footnotes into html linked text.
                    7) support for footers and headers, support for odd/even/
                       first page ones.
                    8) support for sections, i.e knows when to restart 
                       pagenumbering and so on, understands what style of 
                       pagenumbering i.e i vs 1 vs a
                    9) some support for pictures in word docs. gifs/jpgs/pngs 
                       inserted through the insert->picture->file method mostly 
                       work.
                   10) conversion of non european languages into utf-8 
                       encoding which can be viewed correcly by netscape 
                       (definitely works with 4.05)
                Non Supported Features include
                    1) header (and main text) textboxes, which are draw objects 
                       which isnt fully understood yet
                    2) *ole* embedded graphics or other embedded types (e.g. 
                       equations)
                    3) fully correct conversion of tab stops and other 
                       formatting done by the user done with whitespace
                    4) formatting such as distance from borders, centering
                       justification, and nonexplicit pagebreaks. i.e 
                       mswordview only counts user inserted pagebreaks.
                    5) word 6 and 7 etc arent currently supported, just 
                       word 8
                Defects are
                    1) mswordview uses laola to extract the ole streams 
                       from the document, and on occasion laola cant cope 
                       with some files, i.e corrupt docs and some large
                       docs. (though this has happened only twice in 120 
                       megs of data)
                Web Page for download and information at..
                  http://www.csn.ul.ie/~caolan/docs/MSWordView.html
                       and
                  http://www.gnu.org/~caolan/docs/MSWordView.html
                Web gateway to mswordview at..
                  http://www.csn.ul.ie/~caolan/docs/MSWordView-Demo.html
Keywords:       msword, word, office, converter, decoder, translator, html
Author:         Caolan.McNamara@ul.ie (Caolan McNamara)
Maintained-by:  Caolan.McNamara@ul.ie (Caolan McNamara)
Primary-site:   sunsite.unc.edu /pub/Linux/apps/www/converters
                mswordview-0.4.0.tar.gz
Alternate-site: skynet.csn.ul.ie /pub/linux/utils
                mswordview-0.4.0.tar.gz
Original-site:  skynet.csn.ul.ie /pub/linux/utils
                mswordview-0.4.0.tar.gz
Copying-policy: GNU
End




Real Life: Caolan McNamara           *  Doing: MSc in HCI
Work: Caolan.McNamara@ul.ie          *  Phone: +353-61-202699
URL: http://www.csn.ul.ie/~caolan    *  Sig: an oblique strategy
Change instrument roles



- -- 
This article has been digitally signed by the moderator, using PGP.
http://www.iki.fi/mjr/cola-public-key.asc has PGP key for validating signature.
Send submissions for comp.os.linux.announce to: linux-announce@news.ornl.gov
PLEASE remember a short description of the software and the LOCATION.
This group is archived at http://www.iki.fi/mjr/linux/cola.html

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6.3i
Charset: latin1

iQCVAgUBNfka71rUI/eHXJZ5AQGbVAQAy6j8AnH67YoiOzUlFW1AlPt/R+03AcM2
RhJAwV2iJ1u+Ot+s7FyZLUHZi/bDmC8oofAm0r5PM/g3pU9J0yWtr1eeSPgCiXB5
Sd3xr5WjUTYUYpsCEZdC50sD7sTA22KRVs9m8cBTLEDi/6U9Q1pBNRgJr7ejWNSp
lbnE/XFK42Q=
=+9+M
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----