Is there any console .doc editor?

[AndrewLubinus89]

Simply that, can I edit .doc files with any console program?

[Hayl]

no.

not that i have ever heard of.

[Kwj]

Is there some Wine app that can do the trick?

[Hayl]

Is there some Wine app that can do the trick?

MS Office 2000 and MS Office XP both run fine in Crossover Wine from Codeweavers (http://www.codeweavers.com) however Crossover is not free ($).

OpenOffice.org, and AbiWord both can edit/save in the .doc format (but not perfectly).

However, he wanted a CLI app - meaning not in X so none of those will do for him.

[mrBen]

Probably the only thing useful for you would be antiword, which will convert a file from word format into text and runs from the CLI

[dishawjp]

This is far from perfect, but using the "strings" command on a .doc file you should be able to get most or all of the text. Output the command to a text file and edit with a good, powerful, logical word processor. My favorite is "vi." :-)

So it would work something like this:

strings luser.doc > luser.txt
vi luser.txt

There will be some garbage to clear out but I have used this technique on occasion. Usually though I just send the .doc file back to the sender and request that they resend it in a non-proprietary format. Either that or buy me the latest, greatest M$Office suite and a copy of Windows to run it on :-)

If you don't need to work on it in console mode, OpenOffice Write works fine.

HTH

Jim Dishaw

[AndrewLubinus89]

Hey, thanks for the prompt replies. I'll take a look. Unfortunately my (internet) school uses .doc format for their lessons.

[ShieldWolf]

If you can work from a gui, Open Office 1.1 (http://www.openoffice.org/) is great. Yes, it takes a little while to open, but is very responsive once opened. If you're used to MSOffice, there is a learning curve, but not overly steep.

I use the only linux desktop at work(we do have a couple of file servers on linux) and I have absolutely no problem sharing files back and forth.

What school are you "attending"?

[EnigmaOne]

Originally posted by AndrewLubinus89
Hey, thanks for the prompt replies. I'll take a look. Unfortunately my (internet) school uses .doc format for their lessons.

If you're doing this in relation to an educational institution (official, accredited, etc.) you probably qualify for the educational licensing of StarOffice7 (free).
If you can handle firing up X to read/edit ".doc" formatted files, StarOffice7 does a fantastic job of dealing with them with less of that "(but not perfectly)" stuff to have to deal with.

You can get started at:
http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/edu/solutions/staroffice.html