Re: Emacs as a word processor (ways to convert Word/RTF proprietary files)

[Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support>]

* Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> [2020-12-25 07:38]:
> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
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> 
> I'm not going to fight against support for Word files.

- in my opinion both Word and RFT are not necessary for Emacs as that
  just acknowledges proprietary formats and tells users message that
  shall not be told from GNU programs. But there are already
  possibilities to convert Word programs to and from, see below.
 
- there are Word importing capabilities by using other available free
  software. Emacs could advise users to install some external software
  to convert from Word.

- one of best for me personally is `antiword' it just extracts simple
  text. But I have no Word files on computer.

- another good one is Abiword which has Word import/export
  capabilities on the command line. So a simple Emacs function of few
  lines could already use Abiword as external convertor and import file
  into Emacs word processing

From Abiword manual page:

	-t DEST, --to=DEST
		Convert the  given file to another  format, writing the
		result to  DEST.  The format  of DEST is  determined by
		its extension.
		See also --to=FORMAT and --to-name.

	-t FORMAT, --to=FORMAT
		Convert the given files(s)  to the given format. Unless
		explicitly  specified  with   --to-name,  the  original
		filename will  be used (with a  different extension, if
		necessary). See also EXAMPLES.

		The more popular values for FORMAT include:

			lb	lx.
			abw	T{
			Abiword XML format (zabw for gzip, bzabw for bzip2 compression)
			T}
			dbk	DocBook XML
			doc	Microsoft Word binary format
			docx	T{
			Office Open XML (newer Microsoft Word versions)
			T}
			html	Hypertext Markup Language
			kwd	KWord
			odt	OpenDocument Text
			pdf	Portable Document Format
			rtf	Rich Text Format
			sxw	OpenOffice.org Writer 1.0
			txt	Plain text