# KOffice filters status: MSWRITE FILTER

Import | Export
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Import from MS WinWrite to Kword
Last update | 8 July 2002

Features

Import almost everything except OLE from MS WinWrite (3.0 & 3.1) documents
- Character formatting (fonts, bold, italic, underline, superscript, subscript, "(page)" numbering)
- Optional/Soft Hyphenation
- Paragraph formatting (justification, linespacing, indentation, tabulation)
- Paragraphs with multiple newlines
- Pagebreaking (at start or end of line and on next line)
- Images (Standard WMFs, monochrome BMPs, position from left margin)
- Character Set Conversion
- Headers & Footers (including whether or not they are printed on first page)
- Page formatting (margins, positioning of headers & footers, page numbers starting from any number)

Todo

- Fix Image Sizes for certain documents not created by Write
- Fix Character Set Conversion (I have a document that seems to be imported incorrectly)
- Portable code
- OLE
- Fix a highly unusual bug: creating the dialog using dynamic memory allocation crashes KWord (or sometimes just even enabling the dialog causes a crash)
- Fix Page formatting problems
- Performance
- Code cleanup
- Full testing (will be done in version 0.9)
- Fix any remaining issues that can't be easily resolved at the time of writing and/or require changes to KWord
(see file IMPERFECT)

History
(Detailed)

Version 0.3-2 (starting 4 May 2002): KOffice 1.2 Release (as well as all pre-releases > Beta2)
- page numbers starting from any number
- optional hyphenation
- paragraphs with multiple newlines
- major bug fixes: pageBreak at start of line, fontTable terminated by 0 numDataBytes
- character set conversion
- ported to new filter storageFile API
- dialog with Encoding and Import Options (disabled due to stability problems)
Version 0.3-1: KOffice 1.2 Beta1
- fixed mswritelib.cc crash on files with an unusual font table
- emulates image position from left margin by using paragraph indents
- WMFs now render correctly in KWord (thanks to Lorthiois Thierry); note that only KWMF code was changed
- gcc 2.95.3 internal error workaround
- more *.desktop fixes
Version 0.3 (7 Jan 2002): Put into CVS for porting to new filter architecture
- imports nearly everything: now has full character, paragraph, page formatting
- experimental importing of images (Standard WMF + monochrome BMP)
- significant performance enhancements (new MSWriteLib + less XML output)
- emulates Write's unusual linespacing using OFFSETS tag
- includes filtertest.wri to test filter
- corrections to Makefile.am
- corrections/changes to *.desktop files (thanks to Werner Trobin)
Version 0.2 (4 Dec 2001): First stable release
- reads documents reliably
- can read text with full character formatting plus partial paragraph formatting
- nice and modular as it uses the new MSWriteView library (MSWriteLib)
Version 0.1 (7 Oct 2001): Initial unstable release
- underlying code is there to read in the format but the filter can only do plain text, with almost no formatting
(has justification)

Authors | Clarence Dang
Links | Format Specification: a specification for the MSWrite format How to PERFECT the Filter: problems with the filter that are/were hard to fix at the time of writing Development Roadmap: where development is heading Test File ver 0.3-2: displays many features of MSWrite documents

Progress report

No, this filter has not been abandoned!
Development is just occuring very slowly since I'm quite busy.
In a few months, I'll be doing the final rewrite (which will be portable and have a proper OO-design), implementing OLE, checking that everything else is implemented and squashing all remaining bugs.
Then the filter will be declared finished after much testing :)
If you would like to contribute code or see what features are planned, please read the file ROADMAP which contains the anticipated development plan.

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Export Kword to MS WinWrite
Last update | 15 May 2002
Features | N/A
Todo | Everything
History | -
Authors | (If you would like to write this Export filter, send an email to the KOffice mailinglist (and cc it to me :))
Links | -
Progress report | An Export Filter is planned but work on this will commence only after the upgrading of MSWriteLib to 0.4. This will take a few months due to a lack of time.

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