10.21.07
libwpd-0.8.12, the Mac, and you
Not too long ago, someone emailed me looking for a Mac OS X version of the excellent libwpd tools for converting WordPerfect documents. Said correspondant had found my email and a now-404ed URL from a message in a mailing list archive, but couldn’t find a live version of the tools. After that, I told myself I needed to do a better job of blogging about libwpd and our releases, so that there would be fresher hits and valid URLs in search engines.
To that end, we released libwpd-0.8.12 earlier this month (it’s been a busy one for me, hence the delay). The main addition in this version is Fridrich’s fine work in bringing support for tabs and text alignment in WordPerfect 5 and WordPerfect for Mac 2.x and 3.x documents. Tabs and text alignment are probably the last common, “daily-use” features that were not converted in these document formats, and they are now supported more-or-less on par with WordPerfect 6/7/8/9/10/11/12 documents. This release is great news for Mac users who formerly used WordPerfect, as document fidelity should be much improved. In addition, for the first time ever, the Mac OS X versions of the tools are Universal Binaries.
Meanwhile, Fridrich is pushing forward on support for converting text and image boxes for the 0.9 series. Great things are in store for the future.
In the meantime, you can download the libwpd command-line tools (and an AppleScript wrapper for wpd2sxw) for Mac OS X from the project site and go convert documents with tabs until you’re blue in the face. Enjoy!