Re: MSword reader

[shimpei@example.com]

> >>>>> "Viktor" == Viktor Pavlenko <vp@example.com> writes:
> 
>     Viktor> is there a text editor for Linux to read/edit MS word
>     Viktor> files?  Something light unlike StarOffice?
> 
> I haven't found anything "light" that reads MS Word, let alone writes
> it.
> 
> AbiWord does pretty well, I hear, but that's not all that light.
> Lighter than StarOffice, though.  Nor am I sure it writes Word.
> 
> I use strings(1), myself.... :-)

Applix apparently also does a decent job. I'm still waiting for a free word
processor that can do Japanese, though, and strings(1) is only good for
a laugh in this department. [1] On the spreadsheet side, Gnumeric can sort of 
do Japanese (dunno about Japanese Excel files, though), but from what I 
understand, Abi isn't even close to doing multibyte character sets. Of course, 
this was all months ago, and things change quickly around here...

On a tangentially related topic, maddog was using Applix's PowerPoint workalike 
to do his presentation at IBM. I asked him if he had heard of MagicPoint, and 
he said he has, but he has too much legacy presentation templates on Applix to
switch anytime soon.

Shimpei.

[1] On an even more tangential note, strings(1) is also eminently useless for 
plucking strings out of compiled Visual Basic executables--I guess it must be 
converting everything to UTF-16 internally or something. This ruined my plans 
to use RCS ident to keep tabs on a project last year.