[G4] Free/Sharware Word doc reading program

[Richard Smykla]

David,

There's an open-source project called 'antiword' that will convert 
word docs to postscript. Another called 'Strangelove' that will 
convert word .doc files (via antiword and ghostscript) to .pdf files. 
Pretty slick, once you've installed all that. Your documents should 
be quite readable that way, and if you have software to edit pdf 
files, editable too. Try here to download Strangelove:

http://pygmysoftware.com/cgi-bin/product.pl?strangelove-info

Here's their readme blurb:

Strangelove

* In effect: converts Word documents to Adobe PDF files
* In composition: a Cocoa front-end for the utilities antiword and 
ghostscript based on DOCtor

What do I need?

Strangelove requires two software products to do its dirty work.

	* antiword: a command-line utility by Adri van Os that 
converts Word ".doc" files to PostScript files (or text files).
	<http://homepage.mac.com/ronaldo1/FileSharing.html>

	* ghostscript: among other things, can turn PostScript files 
into PDFs (which Mac OS X likes). A variant called ESP Ghostscript is 
available from the gimp-print web site.
	<http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/MacOSX.php3>

Both of these programs are also available from the Fink project. Fink 
is a great way to install Mac OS X ports of Unix software. It also 
has a GUI, called FinkCommander.
	<http://fink.sourceforge.net/>

Strangelove will attempt to find both of these applications, but 
sometimes it won't be able to locate them automatically using 
Strangelove's "Browse" button. If this is the case, you might try 
searching for them (using the Finder or Sherlock). The ghostscript 
executable is called "gs", but antiword is simply "antiword".

HTH,

Rick

>Hello everyone,
>
>Could someone please give me the name of that freeware/shareware 
>program that allows you to read Word docs without having Word or 
>Office?
>
>I've got a couple of Word docs that Appleworks 6 (OSX) can't 
>translate and one that it does translate, but for some reason will 
>only print the first page.
>
>Thanks,
>
>David Crandon

-- 
Rick Smykla
rsmykla at verizon.net