Fwd: request

From: Hubert Figuiere (hub@nyorp.abisource.com)
Date: Wed May 15 2002 - 16:34:34 EDT

  • Next message: Christian Biesinger: "Re: Fwd: request"

    ----- Forwarded message from owner-abiword-dev@abisource.com -----

    Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 06:23:51 -0400
    From: Andre Warnier <aw_eis@compuserve.com>
    Subject: request
    Sender: Andre Warnier <aw_eis@compuserve.com>
    To: AbiWord developers <abiword-dev@abisource.com>
    Message-ID: <200205150624_MC3-FE0F-C0C9@compuserve.com>
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    Dear Sirs,

    I recently discovered AbiWord (and wvWare). Very nice, and thanks a lot.=

    In the course of a development project, I am looking for a command-line
    driven Word-to-text conversion utility, preferably working both under
    Unix(es) and Windows NT/2000. It is to be called by a "daemon/service"
    process, so it should not pop up interactive messages/questions all over
    the place.
    In the system being developed, the original document is kept and stored f=
    or
    later retrieval, and the text result of the conversion is destined to be
    input in a full-text search & retrieval system. This text result can als=
    o
    be post-filtered by various means before being sent to the full-text
    system.
    (I could also take XML output e.g.).
    In other words - in a manner of speaking - the text result does not have =
    to
    be faithful to the original word document in terms of presentation, layou=
    t
    etc..., what is important is that the words would be there, mostly. The
    expected character set of the original word documents would be in the
    ISO-8859-1 range.

    I am not a guru-level programmer, more someone able to assemble existing
    pieces and twiddle with them to make them fit into an application.
    I have looked at various commercially available converters, but none of
    them seems to be available for Unix platforms.
    I have tried to use wvWare under Windows NT, and cannot seem to make it
    work reliably : some documents make it crash with invalid accesses etc..
    On the other hand, I have installed AbiWord under NT - which is supposedl=
    y
    using the wvWare import library - and AbiWord seems to do an excellent jo=
    b
    of importing the same Word documents, and save them as plain text. And
    AbiWord is also much much easier to install on a NT system.

    I am thus turning to you with a request : would a developer in your group=

    be interested in creating, on the base of the AbiWord modules, the
    command-line utility that I need (or a command-line wrapper around
    AbiWord), and if yes under what conditions ?
    I have no problem with the utility in question being placed itself under =
    a
    GPL.

    Thank you in advance,

    Andr=E9 Warnier
    EIS LP
    tel +49-7433-385419
    fax +49-7433-385418
    email : aw_eis@compuserve.com

    ----- End forwarded message -----



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