Additionally, the example in Chapter 13 demonstrates
how to use a trick to easily export an HTML file containing tabular data to Excel
(and OpenOffice.org as well).
Working with Microsoft Word
You can convert Word documents into PDF or HTML with the Antiword or wvWare utilities,
but support for formatting is spotty. I??™ve deployed solutions based on both, and in
my experience, clients become extremely displeased with tools that work great for some
files but break down with other files.
In theory, at least, you could run an open source word processor like AbiWord or
OpenOffice.org from the command line and generate Microsoft Word documents that
way. Both are fairly large software packages, however, and you would likely encounter
long startup times and need a lot of software you would otherwise not require on your
deployment server. Also, both OpenOffice.org and AbiWord have imperfect Word filters,
although support is improving. So, this is a conceivable solution, if that??™s the route you
want to take.
When you want to write to Microsoft Word files, you??™ll typically need a small piece of
software running on your clients??™ desktop machines under Windows.
Pages:
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337