Re: Converting to text

[Eric Ray <ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com>]

> I've asked this before, I'll ask it again (in hopes that someone has
> invented some new whiz-bang gizmo):

It's not new, but ...

> Does anyone know of a macro, tool, program, utility, potion, magic
spell,
> and/or sacrificial offering that will convert a Word document to
*readable*
> text?
> 
> Readable is the key word here, folks. It's possible to simply "Save
> As=text", but when you try that on a document that has columns,
tables, or
> other formatting, you are, in a word, screwed. Another problem we've
> encountered with "Save As=text" is the unique and mystifying ability
of
> Word to take a 20 page document and turn it into one long line of
text--no
> paragraph breaks, no page breaks--nothing!

<SNIP>

> c'mon...share your knowledge...c'mon...please...show me how to do
the
> dance...

Save the Word doc as HTML (or convert to HTML via whatever means you
choose). It doesn't have to be great at all--just a rudimentary
conversion with all of the extraneous crap that Word tosses in will be
just fine.

Then, find a unix command line so you can use the lynx (character-
based)
Web browser. Use:
lynx -dump filename.html > filename.txt
You can dump multiple files or directories with this and tweak options
to get exactly what you need. For example, using this:
lynx -dump -nolist -image_links off -pseudo_inlines off \
-width 60 http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ > testoutput.txt

I got this from the techwr-l homepage at
http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/
(despite the fairly complex  table structure as well as lots of
images):

(Note that I scrunched the width for better emailing and just because
I
could.)


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