From: Alex Schroeder <alex@emacswiki.org>
Subject: Re: MS Word mode?
Date: Fri, 08 Nov 2002 00:40:15 +0100

Roger Mason <rmason@sparky2.esd.mun.ca> writes:

> There was a question about this recently on this forum.  Look for
> undoc.el, I got it from the wiki (I think).  It has worked very well for
> me to date, although I have not attempted ro read complex documents.

Well, it makes things readable, but it is far from perfect -- it seems
to just delete any non-ascii characters, such that sometimes you will
see words such as "Alex8" where "8" is some garbage that just looked
like being part of a real word...  In other words, interfacing to
something like catdoc, antiword, or wvText (included with AbiWord)
might be cool.  Actually all you need is this:

(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.doc\\'" . no-word))

(defun no-word ()
  "Run antiword on the entire buffer."
  (shell-command-on-region (point-min) (point-max) "antiword - " t t))

Alex.

===============================================================================

From: Arnaldo Mandel <am@ime.usp.br>
Subject: Re: MS Word mode?
Date: Fri, 8 Nov 2002 11:52:33 -0200

Alex Schroeder wrote (on Nov 8, 2002):

 >                 Actually all you need is this:
 > 
 > (add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.doc\\'" . no-word))
 > 
 > (defun no-word ()
 >   "Run antiword on the entire buffer."
 >   (shell-command-on-region (point-min) (point-max) "antiword - " t t))

On my system there are lots of filenames ending in .doc whose files
are not Word files.  So I modified your function thusly

(defun no-word ()
  "Run antiword on the entire buffer."
  (if (string-match "Microsoft "
		    (shell-command-to-string (concat "file " buffer-file-name)))
      (shell-command-on-region (point-min) (point-max) "antiword - " t t)))

Works in Solaris and Linux, and should work on other unixes as well.

am

===============================================================================

From: Alex Schroeder <alex@emacswiki.org>
Subject: Re: MS Word mode?
Date: Fri, 08 Nov 2002 18:24:07 +0100

Arnaldo Mandel <am@ime.usp.br> writes:

> (defun no-word ()
>   "Run antiword on the entire buffer."
>   (if (string-match "Microsoft "
> 		    (shell-command-to-string (concat "file " buffer-file-name)))
>       (shell-command-on-region (point-min) (point-max) "antiword - " t t)))

Cool.  I did not know about "file"...  :)

My stuff is on the wiki, btw:

* http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?AntiWord

Alex.

===============================================================================

From: Benjamin Riefenstahl <Benjamin.Riefenstahl@epost.de>
Subject: Re: emacs rmail. How to convert .doc to plain text
Date: 24 Nov 2002 18:08:22 +0100

Hi,

Puff Addison <puff@theaddisons.demon.co.uk> writes:
> Yes, please post your Emacs integration code.

Ok, see below.  I should note that it is probably also possible to
(ab-)use jka-compr for this, which would make my two functions
obsolete.

so long, benny

>>>>>>>

(defun benny-antiword-file-handler (operation &rest args)
  ;; First check for the specific operations
  ;; that we have special handling for.
  (cond ((eq operation 'insert-file-contents)
	 (apply 'benny-antiword-insert-file args))
	((eq operation 'file-writable-p)
	 nil)
	((eq operation 'write-region)
	 (error "Word documents can't be written"))
	;; Handle any operation we don't know about.
	(t (let ((inhibit-file-name-handlers
		  (cons 'benny-antiword-file-handler
			(and (eq inhibit-file-name-operation operation)
			     inhibit-file-name-handlers)))
		 (inhibit-file-name-operation operation))
	     (apply operation args)))))

(defun benny-antiword-insert-file (filename &optional visit beg end replace)
  (set-buffer-modified-p nil)
  (setq buffer-file-name (file-truename filename))
  (setq buffer-read-only t)
  (let ((start (point))
	(inhibit-read-only t))
    (if replace (delete-region (point-min) (point-max)))
    (save-excursion
      (let ((coding-system-for-read 'utf-8)
	    (filename (encode-coding-string
		       buffer-file-name
		       (or file-name-coding-system
			   default-file-name-coding-system))))
	(call-process "antiword" nil t nil "-m" "UTF-8.txt"
		      filename))
      (list buffer-file-name (- (point) start)))))

(setq file-name-handler-alist
      (cons '("\\.doc\\'" . benny-antiword-file-handler)
	    file-name-handler-alist))

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