Is there Anything Like Catdocs for reading .docx files?

[Daniel Dalton]

On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 09:40:57AM -0500, Martin McCormick wrote:
> Daniel Dalton writes:
> > unoconv -- converts between all openoffice formats from a quick scan of
> > the man page. Generated a nice html file of a .doc file for me before,
> > so this looks promising considering oo is always updated to stay current
> > with microsofts new formats!
> 
> Do you have to run an X desktop like gnome and buy unoconv? My
> primary linux system is great in the command line world but I am
> not sure it can handle the extra load. When playing quicktime

No. The software is free and gnome doesn't have to be running to use it!
Here is the output of aptitude show unoconv (including dependencies,
doesn't look too bad):

Package: unoconv
New: yes
State: installed
Automatically installed: no
Version: 0.3-3
Priority: extra
Section: text
Maintainer: Vincent Bernat <bernat at luffy.cx>
Uncompressed Size: 66.6k
Depends: python, python-uno
Conflicts: odt2txt (<= 0.3-1)
Description: converter between OpenOffice.org document formats
 This package provides a commandline utility which can convert from any document
 format that OpenOffice can import to any document format it can export. It uses
 OpenOffice's UNO bindings for non-interactive conversion of documents. 
 
 Supported document formats include Open Document format, MS Word, MS Office
 Open/MS OOXML, PDF, HTML, XHTML, RTF, Docbook, and more.
Homepage: http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/unoconv/


> files with mplayer, it just barely can keep up. I'd hate to buy
> commercial software and then find out it can't pull the wagon.

Uh, where did you get the idea it's "comercial" software?

> 
> 	I do have an Apple Macintosh in my office and this is
> probably a better route to go as the Mac runs a fairly good
> desktop with speech and unoconv for the Mac does exist.

Good, and a free version for linux exists, see above!

> 
> 	Until you answered this post, I didn't know about
> unoconv so I certainly appreciate the information.

No I didn't either until I asked about this some months ago on
debian-user, the abiword solution also seems to work well, again not
requiring a gui, not sure what dependencies it pulls though.

> 
> 	For anyone who is wondering, Linux and FreeBSD Unix are
> my operating systems of choice when doing programming and
> work-related things. The Mac is extremely good and the fact that
> it is Unix-based gives it a nice comfortable feel. The speech is
> excellent but if you ever listen to the output of a log file or
> a C compiler, you will sorely miss the ability to just listen to
> the streaming input at times. If not for that, one could buy the
> cheapest Mac made and just use it as a speech synthesizer for
> anything else. I think some of the least expensive MAC's cost
> about the same as some of the better-quality stand-alone
> synthesizers of a few years ago.

I use linux for everything, braille with espeak, and have not had any
problems.

> 
> 	Again, thanks for the information.

No worries

Good luck,

Daniel.

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