Re: [Groff] Question re: groff to PS to PDF to Microsoft Word...

[Ted Harding]

On 11-Aug-2012 22:33:21 Larry Kollar wrote:
> Clarke Echols <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
>> I have a potential client who needs copy in DOC/Word format, and I'm
>> on Linux. ...
>> 
>> Last time I tried anything of the sort, I produced a doc file from
>> OpenOffice Writer, but when I read it using Word on a PC, the tables
>> were mangled beyond anything remotely useful.
> 
> How long ago was that? OpenOffice has improved over the last couple years. In
> any case, using RTF instead of DOC format to move from OOo to Weird is going
> to be the least problematic.
> 
> -- Larry

I have just tried the groff-->PS-->PDF-->OpenOffice route.

The file in question is a mixture of text and tables, a PDF file
generated using ps2pdf from PS output produced by groff.

The version of OpenOffice is 3.2.1 apparently dating from 2010.

When given the PDF file to open, OO Writer took a while, and then
came up with a screen that looked like a good representation of
the document.

In the tables, however, while the text entries in the cells were
perfectly placed, the horizontal and vertical rules were all over
the place.

I then tried to see if I could save it or export it in an OO document
format. Apart from the option to save as PDF (of no interest in the
cintext of Clerke's query), the only options apparently on offer
were image file formats (e.g. .jpeg, .png, etc) or OO Draw files.

Therefore I very strongly suspect that what OO Write was showing
me on screen was a bit-mapped raster representation of the document,
i.e. it was handling the file as an image.

I can't see Clarke's DOC/Word client as being delighted to get that!

Of course I may have overlooked something -- I'm not an habitual
OO user (still less a Word etc user ... ).

Best wishes to all,
Ted.

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E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <address@hidden>
Date: 12-Aug-2012  Time: 19:26:55
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