Subj : Re: How much should I charge for fixed-price software contract? To : comp.programming From : dj3vande Date : Fri Aug 19 2005 11:57 pm In article , Richard Heathfield wrote: >Randy Howard wrote: >> Strange. If she knows enough to run Linux, then she should be >> capable of opening a word doc. :-) > >And so she is, as I indicated above. Every Linux distribution I've ever met is even kind enough to give you the tools you need to do it. strings will extract any readable text from the file, and Word still keeps the text in a readable format as part of the file (at least up to the version that created the last Word file I had to read, though they've probably "fixed" that by now), so that will give a sufficiently clued user everything they need. If strings doesn't work, then there's the "Read Microsoft" tool, rm, which gives you the useful content of Word files that strings can't extract and helpfully moves the hideous fonts, ugly typography, macro viruses, and general bloat that make up the rest of this class of Word files into the bit bucket for you. dave -- Dave Vandervies dj3vande@csclub.uwaterloo.ca [T]his is the hamburger->cow question. Sure, you can turn the burgers into a cow-shaped object, but it won't moo. --Mark McIntyre in comp.lang.c .