From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Nov 1 02:26:54 2007 Return-Path: Delivered-To: questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7B64116A419 for ; Thu, 1 Nov 2007 02:26:54 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from emailrob@emailrob.com) Received: from green.dls.net (green.dls.net [209.242.20.84]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 62D6513C481 for ; Thu, 1 Nov 2007 02:26:54 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from emailrob@emailrob.com) Received: from emailrob.com (216-145-235-109.rev.dls.net [216.145.235.109]) by green.dls.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id F3A1B412A9A for ; Wed, 31 Oct 2007 19:29:24 -0500 (CDT) Message-ID: <47291DE1.6010302@emailrob.com> Date: Thu, 01 Nov 2007 00:29:21 +0000 From: spellberg_robert User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.0.2) Gecko/20030208 Netscape/7.02 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: questions@freebsd.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Subject: extracting 7_bit_ascii from ms_word files X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 01 Nov 2007 02:26:54 -0000 greetings --- i finally ran into a situation where my existing approaces are no longer satisfactory. i never bought "office". i have a twelve_year_old version of "wordperfect" from [ at that time ] novell that still works just fine [ i first used wordperfect in the early 1980's; why change ? ]. it doesn't recognize new ms formats. sometimes, i can use "wordpad" on my "win_98_se" box that still works; but not always. my lawyer insists on hard_copy and snail_mail, so my principal application is, actually, obviated. if files only had a few dozen lines, i could edit them by hand in "vi". i simply did not have enough situations to demand a more sophisticated approach; now, i do. i started here [ over 1000 entries ] http://www.freebsd.org/ports/textproc.html where i found nothing relevant under "doc" and where i found "word2x", which looks --really-- old and where i found "wv", which seemed more promising. searching the questions and newbies mail archives, i found antiword and catdoc, but this is from 2002_feb. while reading up on "wv", i found this http://www.abisource.com/ which caused me to search. i found this http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/ports.cgi?query=abiword&stype=all both of these seem to jog my memory, but my memory .... my application is to exchange text files, by e_mail, with someone who thinks ms products are the be_all and end_all [ after all, if "everyone" is spending thousands of dollars on software, just like he is, what makes me so special ? ]. i anticipate acquiring other people like this in the near future, so my time on this just may be well_spent. in general, these are not the kind of folks who find manipulating files intuitively obvious. yet, i may find that i have to give them special instruction. i am not looking for something wonderful, just reasonably competent and reasonably current. if, in addition to my desired direction, i can convert a 7_bit_ascii to a ".doc" file for his benefit, that's some further whining that i can avoid. i strongly suspect that, as soon as this becomes a solved problem, ms changes something critical, so this may be a fool's errand. none_the_less, i'll give it a try. which one or several things are generally accepted for this format_conversion task ? is this "abiword" one of them or do i seek something else ? if something else, can someone point me in a useful direction [ whether or not it is something i have named ] ? while 6.2 and, soon, 7.x are de rigeur, if it works on 4.11 [ very long story ], that's a plus. thanks whole bunches in advance. [ please cc me, as my attempt to re_subscribe to the list as a courtesy doesn't seem to be taking. ] rob