1 Frequently Asked Questions
2 ==========================
4 These questions and answers are mainly Linux/Unix oriented. For other
5 Operating Systems you may want to read the documentation provided by the
6 people who ported Antiword.
8 Q1: How do I install Antiword?
9 A1: (a) Make a suitable directory such as '$HOME/src/antiword' and copy the
10 'antiword.tar.gz' file to this directory.
11 (b) decompress: 'gunzip antiword.tar.gz'
12 (c) unpack: 'tar xvf antiword.tar'
13 (d) compile: 'make all'
14 (e) install: 'make install'. This will install Antiword in the $HOME/bin
16 (f) copy the file 'fontnames' and one or more mapping files from the
17 Resources directory to the $HOME/.antiword directory (note the dot
19 NOTE: you can skip point (f) if your system administrator already copied
20 these files to /usr/share/antiword.
22 Q2: I get the message "I can't open your mapping file (xxxx-x.txt)"
23 A2: This means that the mapping file has not been installed. The installation
24 may have to be done manually. See above answer A1, point (f).
25 NOTE: Antiword assumes that a file that can't be opened for reading is a
26 file that doesn't exist.
28 Q3: How do I use Antiword?
29 A3: Type antiword -h and see.
31 Q4: I tried "antiword -m /some/directory/8859-1.txt word.doc", but this
33 A4: The -m option is followed by the name of a mapping file, a full pathname
36 Q5: How does Antiword deal with Word macro viruses?
37 A5: Antiword does not run any Word macros because it can't do so.
38 Therefore such a virus will not harm your computer system.
40 Q6: What is the purpose of the file 'fontnames' in the '/usr/share/antiword/'
41 or '$HOME/.antiword' directory?
42 A6: This file provides a translation table from the font names used in a Word
43 document to the font names used by a PostScript printer.
44 The file 'fontnames' can be edited to match the font collection used by
45 your PostScript printer.
47 Q7: What is 'Hidden Text'?
48 A7: Hidden Text is Microsoft speak for text that may or may not be shown
49 on the screen, subject to the user's preferences, but such text is never
52 Q8: Antiword claims to support all ISO-8859 character sets, but I can't see
54 A8: There is support for all ISO-8859 character sets, but only in the text
55 output, not in the PostScript output.
56 The result can only be seen if your xterm, vtterm, kvt or similar
57 terminal emulation program uses a font compatible with that ISO-8859
60 Q9: Which mapping file (-m option) is correct in my situation?
61 A9: The correct mapping file depends on the character set you need for output
62 in a specific language.
63 For Western European languages (like English, French, German) this is
64 8859-1.txt. (OS/2: cp1252.txt) (DOS: cp850.txt)
65 For Eastern European languages (like Polish, Czech, Slovak, Croatian) this
66 is 8859-2.txt. (OS/2: cp1250.txt) (DOS: cp852.txt)
67 For Esperanto use 8859-3.txt.
68 For Russian use 8859-5.txt or koi8-r.txt. (OS/2: cp1251.txt)
70 For Ukrainian use koi8-u.txt.
71 For Hebrew use 8859-8.txt. (DOS: cp862.txt)
72 If your system supports it, you might also try UTF-8.txt.
74 NOTE: UTF-8 also enables Antiword to show text in languages like Chinese,
77 Q10: I tried UTF-8, but some documents show more garbage than text. Why?
78 A10: UTF-8 will only work if the document was saved by a Unicode enabled
79 version of Word (or if Word used ISO-8859-1 as its internal encoding).
80 The following versions of Word are known to be Unicode enabled:
81 Word 6 and Word 7 for Asian languages, all versions of Word 97,
82 Word 98 (Mac), Word 2000, Word 2001 (Mac) and Word 2002 (aka Word XP).
84 Q11: Why can't Antiword read from stdin directly? Why use a temporary file?
85 A11: The information in a Word document is not stored sequentially. Therefore
86 the use of the "fseek" function can't be avoided. So Antiword must copy
87 stdin to a temporary file first and then process that file.
89 Q12: Why does the XML output of Antiword sometimes contain such a strange
90 structure or practically no structure at all?
91 A12: Remember that Word is basically 'text plus appearance' and XML is
92 basically 'text plus structure'. If a Word document is written by a
93 competent person there will be a balance between appearance and structure,
94 but if a Word document is written by an inexperienced or incompetent
95 person the Word document can end up without a structure, or worse, with a
97 Antiword can't create a structure when there is none.