Manual Page - catdoc(1)
Manual Reference Pages - catdoc (1)
NAME
catdoc - reads MS-Word file and puts its content as plain text on standard output
CONTENTS
Synopsis
Description
Options
Character Sets
Character Substitution
Runtime Configuration
Bugs
Author
SYNOPSIS
catdoc [-vlu8btawxV] [-m
number] [
-s
charset] [
-d
charset] [
-f
output-format]
file
DESCRIPTION
catdoc behaves much like
cat(1)
but it reads MS-Word file and produces human-readable text on standard output.
Optionally it can use
latex(1)
escape sequences for characters which have special meaning for LaTeX.
It also makes some effort to recognize MS-Word tables, although it never
tries to write correct headers for LaTeX tabular environment. Additional
output formats, such is HTML can be easily defined.
catdoc doesn’t attempt to extract formatting information other than tables from
MS-Word document, so different output modes means mainly that different
characters should be escaped and different ways used to represent characters,
missing from output charset. See CHARACTER SUBSTITUTION below
catdoc uses internal
unicode(4)
representation of text, so it is able to convert texts when charset in
source document doesn’t match charset on target system.
See CHARACTER SETS below.
If no file names supplied,
catdoc processes its standard input unless it is terminal. It is unlikely that
somebody could type Word document from keyboard, so if
catdoc invoked without arguments and stdin is not redirected, it prints brief
usage message and exits.
Processing of standard input (even among other files) can be forced using
dash ’-’ as file name.
By default,
catdoc wraps lines which are more than 72 chars long and separates paragraphs by
blank lines. This behavior can be turned of by
-w switch. In
wide mode
catdoc prints each paragraph as one long line, suitable for import into word processors which perform word wrapping theirselves.
OPTIONS
|
-a |
- shortcut for -f ascii. Produces ASCII text as output.
Separates table columns with TAB
|
|
-b |
- process broken MS-Word file. Normally,
catdoc checks if first 8 bytes of file is Microsoft OLE signature. If so, it processes file, otherwise
it just copies it to stdin. It is intended to use
catdoc as filter for viewing all files with
.doc extension.
|
|
-dcharset |
| |
- specifies destination charset name. Charset file has format described in
CHARACTER SETS below and should have
.txt extension and reside in
catdoc library directory ( ${exec_prefix}/lib/catdoc). By default, current locale charset is used if langinfo support compiled in.
|
|
-fformat |
| |
- specifies output format as described in CHARACTER SUBSTITUTION below.
catdoc comes with two output formats - ascii and tex. You can add your own if you
wish.
|
|
-l |
Causes
catdoc to list names of available charsets to the stdout and exit successfully.
|
|
-mnumber |
| |
Specifies right margin for text (default 72).
-m 0 is equivalent to
-w
|
|
-scharset |
| |
Specifies source charset. (one used in Word document), if Word document
doesn’t contain UTF-16 text. When reading rtf documents, it is
typically not necessary, because rtf documents contain ansicpg
specification. But it can be set wrong by Word (I’ve seen RTF documents
on Russian, where cp1252 was specified). In this case this option would
take precedence over charset, specified in the document. But
source_charset statement in the configuration file have less priority
than charset in the document.
|
|
-t |
- shortcut for
-f tex
converts all printable chars, which have special meaning for
LaTeX(1)
into appropriate control sequences. Separates table columns by
&.
|
|
-u |
- declares that Word document contain UNICODE (UTF-16) representation
of text (as some Word-97 documents). If catdoc fails to correct Word document
with default charset, try this option.
|
|
-8 |
- declares is Word document is 8 bit. Just in case that catdoc
recognizes file format incorrectly.
|
|
-w |
disables word wrapping. By default
catdoc output is splitted into lines not longer than 72 (or number, specified by
-m option) characters and paragraphs
are separated by blank line. With this option each paragraph is one
long line.
|
|
-x |
causes catdoc to output unknown UNICODE character as \xNNNN, instead
of question marks.
|
|
-v |
causes catdoc to print some useless information about word document
structure to stdout before actual start of text.
|
|
-V |
outputs catdoc version
|
|
CHARACTER SETS
When processing MS-Word file
catdoc uses information about two character sets, typically different
- input and output. They are stored in plain text files in
catdoc library directory. Character set files should contain two whitespace-separated
hexadecimal numbers - 8-bit code in character set and 16-bit Unicode code.
Anything from hash mark to end of line is ignored, as well as blank lines.
catdoc distribution includes some of these character sets. Additional character set
definitions, directly usable by
catdoc can be obtained from ftp.unicode.org. Charset files have
.txt suffix, which shouldn’t be specified in command-line or configuration
files.
Note that
catdoc is distributed with Cyrillic charsets as default. If you are not
Russian, you probably don’t want it, an should reconfigure catdoc at
compile time or in runtime configuration file.
When dealing with documents with charsets other than default, remember
that Microsoft never uses ISO charsets. While letters in, say cp1252 are
at the same position as in ISO-8859-1, some punctuation signs would be
lost, if you specify ISO-8859-1 as input charset. If you use cp1252,
catdoc would deal with those signs as described in CHARACTER
SUBSTITUTION below.
CHARACTER SUBSTITUTION
catdoc converts MS-Word file into following internal Unicode representation:
|
|
1. Paragraphs are separated by ASCII Line Feed symbol (0x000A)
2. Table cells within row are separated by ASCII Field Separator symbol
|
| |
(0x001C)
|
3. Table rows are separated by ASCII Record Separator (0x001E)
4. All printable characters, including whitespace are represented with their
|
| |
respective UNICODE codes.
|
|
This UNICODE representation is subsequently converted into 8-bit text in
target character set using following four-step algorithm:
|
|
1. List of special characters is searched for given Unicode character.
|
| |
If found, then appropriate multi-character sequence is output instead of
character.
|
2. If there is an equivalent in target character set, it is output.
3. Otherwise, replacement list is searched and, if there is multi-character
|
| |
substitution for this UNICODE char, it is output.
|
|
4. If all above fails, "Unknown char" symbol (question mark) is output.
|
|
Lists of special characters and list of substitution are character
set-independent, because special chars should be escaped regardless of their
existence in target character set (usually, they are parts of US-ASCII, and
therefore exist in any character set) and replacement list is searched only
for those characters, which are not found in target character set.
These lists are stored in
catdoc library directory in files with prefix of format name. These files have
following format:
Each line can be either comment (starting with hash mark) or contain
hexadecimal UNICODE value, separated by whitespace from string, which
would be substituted instead of it. If string contain no whitespace it
can be used as is, otherwise it should be enclosed in single or double
quotes. Usual backslash sequences like
’\n’,’\t’ can be used in these string.
RUNTIME CONFIGURATION
Upon startup catdoc reads its system-wide configuration file (
catdocrc in
catdoc library directory) and then
user-specific configuration file
${HOME}/.catdocrc.
These files can contain following directives:
|
|
|
source_charset = charset-name |
| |
Sets default source charset, which would be used if no
-s option specified. Consult configuration of nearby windows
workstation to find one you need.
|
|
target_charset = charset-name |
| |
Sets default output charset. You probably know, which one you use.
|
|
charset_path = directory-list |
| |
colon-separated list of directories, which are searched for charset files.
This allows you to install additional charsets in your home directory.
If first directory component of path is ~ it is replaced by contents of
HOME environment variable.
On MS-DOS platform, if directory name starts with %s, it is replaced
with directory of executable file. Empty element in list (i.e. two
consequitve colons) is considered current directory.
|
|
map_path = directory-list |
| |
colon-separated list of directories, which are searched for special character
map and replacement map.
Same substitution rules as in
charset_path are applied.
|
|
format = format name |
| |
Output format which would be used by default.
catdoc comes with two formats -
ascii and tex but nothing prevents you from writing your own format (set two map files -
special character map and replacement map).
|
|
unknown_char = character specification |
| |
sets character to output instead of unknown Unicode character (default ’?’)
Character specification can have one of two form - character enclosed in
single quotes or hexadecimal code.
|
|
use_locale =(yes|no) |
| |
Enables or disables automatic selection of output charset (default
yes),
based on
system locale settings (if enabled at compile time). If automatic
detection is enabled, than output charset settings in the configuration
files (but not in the command line) are ignored, and current system
locale charset is used instead. There are no automatic choice of input
charset, based of locale language, because most modern Word files (since
Word 97) are Unicode anyway
|
|
BUGS
Doesn’t handle
fast-saves properly. Prints footnotes as separate paragraphs at the end of
file, instead of producing correct LaTeX commands. Cannot distinguish
between empty table cell and end of table row.
SEE ALSO
xls2csv(1),
cat(1),
strings(1),
utf(4),
unicode(4)
AUTHOR
V.B.Wagner <vitus@45.free.net>
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| MS-Word reader | catdoc (1) | Version 0.94.2 |
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