On 04/19/2009 07:56 AM, Brian Barker wrote: > At 20:55 18/04/2009 -0400, S P Arif Sahari Wibowo wrote: >>Do you know how to get .doc files from MS Word 5.x for DOS opened in >>OpenOffice or converted to something OpenOffice will open, with the >>formatting mostly intact? > > At 09:33 19/04/2009 -0400, S P Arif Sahari Wibowo wrote: >>I use OpenOffice 3.1.0 and 2.4.1 in OS X and Linux. > > I have two suggestions, though - sadly - I suspect neither may be of much use. > > 1. It seems that Microsoft, when faced with the need to provide a > Y2K patch for Word 5 for DOS and presumably because the product was > even then very out of date, chose to make a corrected version of it > available free of charge. This still seems to be available at > http://download.microsoft.com/download/word97win/Wd55_be/97/WIN98/EN-US/Wd55_ben.exe > (or http://tinyurl.com/65puu ). (You will want to confirm the > licence conditions of this product for yourself.) > > You can run this in a DOS box under Windows, of course, and I > understand that you may also be able to do something similar under OS > X or Linux. What I don't know is what you can do once you have > opened your documents in this. Since it is a DOS product with a text > screen, you presumably cannot usefully copy and paste into OpenOffice > or anything with a similar graphic interface. But you may be able to > save your documents in some other format which can then be opened in > (or staged to) OpenOffice.
http://insidesocal.com/click/2008/12/microsoft-word-for-dos-its-fre.html http://lifehacker.com/5098369/more-ubuntu-kung-fu [Get a High-Quality (and Free) Command-Line Word Processor with Microsoft Word] I'm not sure that will be very useful as I think you'll only be able to save in the same format. For linux, this might be worth a try: - in Ubuntu/Debian (Universe repository): $ sudo apt-get install antiword http://freshmeat.net/projects/antiword 0.34 says: Changes: This release includes better approximations for fancy characters in the output, support for text boxes, support for MacWord 4 and 5 as well as Word-for-DOS documents, support... for superscripts and subscripts, as well as improved lists. Several bugs were fixed. > > 2. A converter for Word 5 for DOS files exists which can be used > from versions of Word for Windows. This is called DOSWRD32.CNV. It > seems that this may no longer be available from Microsoft, but you > may be able to find it elsewhere. This could be installed in a > Windows version of Word (or perhaps even the Windows Word Viewer?) by > adding it to the appropriate folder - probably \Program Files\Common > Files\Microsoft Shared\TextConv. If you can get access to a Windows > installation of Word (or the Word Viewer?) you may be able to use > this to copy and paste material into OpenOffice or else to save the > documents in some more helpful interchange format. > > I suspect this may not help: sorry. > > Brian Barker @S P Arif: I _may_ be able to convert the files for you; I still have old versions of Word install disks & could try them in dosemu or dosbox. I also have a Win2K virtual machine with MS Office 97 on it - and that may be able to open a file. If you can send me one of the files off list I'll be happy to give it a try & see what I can do. Gary --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
