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Re: [Groff] conversion to DOC format


From: Ted Harding
Subject: Re: [Groff] conversion to DOC format
Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2004 09:33:17 +0100 (BST)

On 04-Aug-04 Larry Kollar wrote:
> 
> Chances are, all these people are looking for is something they can
> read into Weird. This is a dirty trick I learned from the AbiWord
> folks a while back, but it works: create an HTML file, rename it to
> whatever.doc, and send that. They'll double-click it and Word will
> open it right up. So you can even skip the "open it in Word and save
> as .doc" step if you like.
>:-)

I thought this was a delightfully sneaky suggestion, espacially since
it would exploit that very feature of "Weird" (and thanks for that
suggestion too!) which most sharply gets up my nose -- namely that
it will silently and spontaneously do something which you would never
in your right mind expect (and usually do not want)!

However, trying it, I found (using Weird-97, which is all I have on
that front) that it didn't work as described.

Namely, I took a pukka HTML file ("wholefaq.html"), renamed it as
"wholefaq.doc", copied it to my MSWin virtual machine, and double
clicked on it as Larry describes.

The result was the display, in Weird, of the raw HTML code plain-text
fashion, in Courier.

However, when I used the file with its original name "wholefaq.html",
although double-clicking on it will open it in Internet Explorer
(not what Larry would have intended), if I first started up Weird
with no file, and then did "File -> Open" with "wholefaq.html" as
target, it then converted this to a Weird file which could then be
saved as ".doc".

So, yes, it did work, but not unfortunately in the sneaky fashion
which I had been hoping for! So sending someone an HTML file named
as a ".doc" file to be double-clicked on would have left them staring
at HTML, at any rate if they were using Weird-97, and this would have
defeated Dean's purpose and quite possibly have spoilt his chances of
the job. Nor, I doubt, would it have been particularly well viewed if,
when sending the file, he accompanied it with instructions "This is
an HTML file 'resume.html'. First start up Word, then, in the 'File'
menu, open 'resume.html'." This would have been seen as altogether too
much trouble ...

However, as I say, this was in Weird-97, and possibly other versions
may behave differently. Maybe for "possibly" read "probably" -- I
expect different versions to behave differently, in fundamental ways,
and unpredictably (which maybe negates "probably" ... ).

Best wishes to all,
Ted.


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Date: 05-Aug-04                                       Time: 09:33:17
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