Re: Fwd: request

From: phearbear (phearbear@home.se)
Date: Wed May 15 2002 - 18:31:13 EDT

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    Hubert Figuiere wrote:

    >----- 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>
    >MIME-Version: 1.0
    >Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
    >Content-Type: text/plain;
    > charset=ISO-8859-1
    >Content-Disposition: inline
    >
    >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 -----
    >
    >

    Even though it might not fit saying this in a Abiword Mailinglist ;),
    there is a very handy util called 'antiword' which simply converts a
    word document to plain text in a nice way.



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