Date: Fri, 21 Mar 1997 02:36:34 +0100 From: Peter Korsten <peter@grendel.IAEhv.nl> To: John Utz <spaz@u.washington.edu> Cc: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>, hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: MSWord docs... Message-ID: <19970321023634.25431@grendel.IAEhv.nl> In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.3.95.970319152236.19915A-100000@becker2.u.washington.edu>; from John Utz on Wed, Mar 19, 1997 at 03:26:27PM -0800 References: <8205.858809260@time.cdrom.com> <Pine.OSF.3.95.970319152236.19915A-100000@becker2.u.washington.edu>
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John Utz shared with us: > > On Wed, 19 Mar 1997, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: > > > What's the latest technology on previewing MSword stuff under FreeBSD? > > I haven't been keeping up, I'm afraid... I know we can currently handle > > postscript, pdf and acrobat, but word? Thanks. > > if u find one, let *all* of us know! I seem to recall a post in > one of the groups i read about the fact that some guy in germany hacked > the file format, and then removed it from his website "by request of > microsoft". > > if somebody could do a viewer, then somebody could do a word clone! Hmm. I think that I wrote about the guy in Germany. I don't have the URL at home, mail me at 'peterk@IAEhv.nl' if you want it. I don't know whether the link has been removed. The guy does state that he figured out a file format himself, which happens to look remarkably similar to the MS OLE 2.0 file format in general and the Word format in particular. (But only the raw text can be extracted, forget about things as tables and formatting.) I do know that the MS Word format was removed, by request of MS, from the "Wotsit File Format Collection" (http://www.wotsit.demon.co.uk). As a matter of fact, we do have the Word binairy file format at our office. It's pretty easy to come by, just send a mail to 'wordbff@microsoft.com', state your company, your position, the usual address stuff and why you want the format (better check http://www.microsoft.com/ first). After some time, an envelope with a contract arrives. You sign it, send it back, and again after some time the docs arrive per UPS next day delivery express service arrives (and you can put your signature on one of those cool Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy lookalike gadgets). Great service, I must say. There are a few quirks: 1. You have to keep the information to your own company and you aren't allowed to publish it. So a source distribution probably is out of the question. A solution might be, that only a binary of a word-to-whatever converter would be available. 2. You're not allowed to make a word processor. 3. The docs suppose that you use the OLE 2.0 API to read the word files. We don't have docs on that, but a lot can be learnt from the documentation of the German guy. Moreover, it wouldn't be a bad idea to be able to read Access and Excel files as well, if there were an OLE 2.0 API in FreeBSD. - Peter -- Peter Korsten | peter@grendel.IAEhv.nl (UUCP) | peterk@IAEhv.nl C/C++/Perl/Java hacker
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