Re: converting ms word files

[Daniel Dalton <d.dalton@iinet.net.au>]

On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 01:56:30AM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote:
> On 02/11/2009 01:22 AM, Daniel Dalton wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> What's the best console tool (text-mode), to convert ms word files to
>> plane text?
>> catdoc, seems ok, works on most files, but looses a lot of formatting.
>
> Well, sure you lose formatting going from Word to text.  Can you be more 
> specific as to what you mean?

Yep, well, I just mean like indentation, numbers, tables converted to
tabs, etc.
When I say numbers I mean the auto numbering word does, and for that to
show up in plain text as 1, 2, 3 etc...

Does that make sense, and possibly other things.

>
>> antiword, seems quite good, but it doesn't work on every file...
>>
>> What are people using, any better suggestions?
>>
>> I have a script here ready to go, so all I have to do is set the prog
>> variable... I get a lot of these files unfortunately, so any suggestions
>> would be appreciated.
>
> $ abiword --to=txt some_file.doc
>

Uh... I was hoping to avoid starting the gui...

Thanks,

Daniel.