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Best Linux native program for manipulating .doc files?


Steve Scrimpshire
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I've tired AbiWord, OpenOffice and StarOffice, but they seem to lose a little bit of the formatting when view using MSWord (ex: tryning to save a resume, when I think I have it right-justified using a Linux proggie, it is not right-justified when viewed in MSWord and sometimes when printed). Are there any reliable Linux programs that can save a document in *.doc format without losing formatting? I'm trying to give up booting into Windows entirely.

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Why save it in .doc format? Save it in Rich Text Format, MSWord will still be able to read it, and it should retain all the formatting that way. I personally don't worry at all about specific Windows compat. (although I try to put things in a format that someone on a Windows machine should be able to access), so I haven't tried recently... are there now some types of formatting that .doc supports and .rtf doesn't?

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What Steve is probably trying to do is follow instructions. When an ad or person says, concerning a resume, "send it in .doc format", that's what they mean. In most cases if you send it in any other format it won't even be opened, so why bother? Would you consider hiring someone that can't follow instructions? :wink: It's this reason (and some games) that I still have a Win98 install and quite frankly.....I don't get it. Why can't someone correctly decode the .doc format and implement it into a app for linux?

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Why can't someone correctly decode the .doc format and implement it into a app for linux?

and decoding doesn't seem to be the problem (at least open office can read .doc files just fine), encoding is. It's hard cause microsoft try to do their damndest to change their format around do only their software (and by same token, their OS) gets used.

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What's this antiword app?....anyone try it?

 

However, by the same token, I wouldn't want to work for an organization so inflexible.
Are you kiding?......if you tell an employee to do something specific, you don't really mean do_something_specific.....you mean do it however you think best and whenever you feel like it? I don't think so! I hate working in an environment where everyone does what they want to do instead of what they're told or expected and hired to do, because those of us that do what we're suppose to do end up having to do the undone :roll:
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I use antiword all the time.

 

And sorry, following orders blindly leads to gassing millions of people.

 

And of course you need to follow rules when you work for an organization. However, if I am submitting a job application, I do not yet work for that organization, and it is perfectly appropriate for me to decide that they are too inflexible if they demand that a document be in .doc format. It shows a lack of imagination and responsiveness on their part, which leads me to believe that they're going to be just as inflexible in a changing marketplace and I'll probably end up being downsized anyway. Some rules are common sense as far as resumes go. Demanding .doc is not, when there are a multitude of formats that Word can read.

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Well, I figured you had already looked at it in RPMDrake or something. Antiword reads Word documents. Here's what my system says:

 

terry@timestorm: /home/terry

00:39:47 $ gaze what antiword

Antiword is a free MS-Word reader for 

Linux, RISC OS, and DOS.  It converts the 

documents from Word 2, 6, 7, 97, 2000, and 

2002 to text and Postscript. Antiword 

tries to keep the layout of the document 

intact.

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Or they're being modest :) --- I don't know, since I don't have Word to compare it against.... it gives very good results as far as appearance goes even so. And no, it only reads .doc files, doesn't write them.

 

If you wanted more info,

terry@timestorm: /home/terry

01:22:12 $ gaze website antiword

http://www.winfield.demon.nl/index.html

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I didn't realize my topic was going to lead to gassing of millions of people. Sorry.

 

You're right. That had no relation to the topic what-so-ever, and I apologize.

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