Ms-Word viewer and link to Pine.

[Janina Sajka]

Charley:

On Thu, 25 Jul 2002, Charles Crawford wrote:

> 	I know Janina told me about a viewer for ms-word documents that come as 
> attachments, but I forgot the name and where to get it.  also how to attach 
> it to Pine so I can use it in the view attachments function.  Anyone have 
> any advice?

There are three applications, wordview (now known as wv), antiword, and 
catdoc, that do what you ask. Of course, they can only guess at the 
conversion, because the protocols governing the storage of data in 
Microsoft Word are secret and unpublished. The part about automating a 
conversion and opening in a viewer under pine is a matter of building an 
appropriate mailcap entry.

Before giving you more specifics, however, may I ask you to consider 
joining the movement against Word attachments? Please read:

	We Can Put an End to Word Attachments
	http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html

You may have noted a brief line in this regard at the bottom of my email 
ignature. It simply says:

	Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.
	   See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html

I can tell you that this simple statement has been frequently noticed and 
asked about. That has given me the opportunity to explain how the practice 
of attaching proprietary formats to email is in no one's interests, 
excepting perhaps Microsoft's.

When I do get a document from someone in a proprietary format, I usually 
send them the following statements by return mail:


You sent me a document in Microsoft Word format, a secret proprietary format, so it is hard for me to read. If you send me plain text or HTML, then I
will read it.

Distributing documents in Word format is bad for you and for others. You can't be sure what they will look like when viewed with a
different version of Word. They may even not work at all.

Receiving Word attachments is bad for you because they can carry viruses (see http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/acro.html). Sending Word
documents is also bad for you, because a Word document normally includes hidden information about the author, enabling those in the know to pry into
the author's activities (maybe yours). Text that you think you deleted may still be embarrassingly present. See
http://www.microsystems.com/Shares_Well.htm for more info.

But above all, sending people Word documents puts pressure on them to use Microsoft software and helps to deny them any other choice. In effect, you
become a buttress of the Microsoft monopoly. This pressure is a major obstacle to the broader adoption of free software. Would you please reconsider
the use of Word format for communication with other people?

To convert the file to HTML is simple. Open the document, click on File, then Save As, and in the Save As Type strip box at the bottom of the box,
choose HTML Document or Web Page. Then choose Save. You can then attach the new HTML document instead of your Word document. Note that Word changes
in inconsistent ways--if you see slightly different menu item names, please try them.

To convert to plain text is almost the same--instead of HTML Document, choose Text Only or Text Document as the Save As Type.

Now, if you still want to go ahead with installing one of the Word file 
conversion utilities, look for them on Google and compile one. Test it out 
by hand. Then, let's take up the part about automating the conversion and 
viewing of these documents--a part I have not yet fully debugged.

PS: I truly am no longer installing this software on my systems.