Reading from word documents

[andrewferguson]

Hi,
Is there a way to read the text of word documents in LiveCode? I have seen the WordLib 2 plugin, but I don't want to get it if I could read the text in LiveCode without a plugin.
I do not need any fancy formatting, just the text as all I want to do is search it. Also I do not need to output (write) to Word documents.
Thanks,
Andrew

[shaosean]

Well, Microsoft Word documents were originally a closed binary format so you would need to spend a few days trying to decode it (a quick trip to a search engine could probably help you out).. The newer versions are an open format (more or less) and documentation about them should be available online (again, a search engine is your friend).. If the WordLib 2 plugin does what you need to do, it could cost you less time/money to purchase it then to try to recreate it..

[FourthWorld]

Having explored parsing Word files myself, I'm glad Curry decided to make WordLib. The Word format is a complex beast, very tedious to parse. Curry's library makes working with those files really simple, and supports OpenOffice/LibreOffice as well.