Forum OpenACS Q&A: displaying Word documents directly

I don't mean the way file-storage does it (it basically checks if you
have Word installed and then frames it inside the browser). I would
like people to look at the document with all its pictures and graphs
etc. without needing Word.

Another thing that I would like to implement is an easy way to
display mathematical functions. Is there any free software students
can use to write down math related content? And then could I
integrate their documents the way I want to do it with the Word
documents?

If there is a free tool for those things, I could try to integrate it
with file-storage... if I make it 😊

I have been to freeviewer.com and to wvware.com... They look very interesting, thanks.

wvware tells you that they mainly convert word into html. How does freeviewer.com convert Powerpoint, Excell etc. into html? Do you use any other conversion tools within your knowledge management project.

By the way. I was working as an intern for Siemens Sharenet in Munich. Right now I am working on an KM project for an old German bank and on a free KM-system for students in Germany.

I would like to have a look at what you produced. I might use some code with my own project (if you let me 😊) and help you with some KM-experience...

A copy of the Adobe Acrobat Writer is not too steep in price ($250 for 5.0), and from my personal experience with version 4.0, works very well. They also have a web site, http://192.150.14.203/, which will allow you to make a couple of PDF files for free and try things out.

I seem to remember some commercial plug-in that allowed you to display excel files in-line; I'll have to take a look.

Here's the code I used in that site:

if {$type_srcfile == "application/msword"} {
  if {$desttype == "text/plain"} {
    set tmp_destfile "$tmp_filename.txt"
 
    exec $appdir/antiword -m /usr/local/lib/antiword/8859-1.txt 
     -t $srcfile >$tmp_destfile
 
    #ns_returnfile $conn 200 "text/plain" $tmp_destfile
    ns_respond -status 200 -type "text/plain" -file $tmp_destfile
 
    ns_unlink $tmp_destfile
  } elseif {$desttype == "application/pdf"} {
    set tmp_tmp "$tmp_filename.ps"
    set tmp_destfile "$tmp_filename.pdf"
 
    exec "$appdir/antiword" -m 
     /usr/local/lib/antiword/8859-1.txt -p a4 $srcfile ">$tmp_tmp"
    exec gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite 
     -sOutputFile=$tmp_destfile -c save pop -f
    #ns_returnfile $conn 200 "application/pdf" $tmp_destfile
    ns_respond -status 200 -type "application/pdf" -file 
     $tmp_destfile
 
    ns_unlink $tmp_tmp
    ns_unlink $tmp_destfile
  } else {
    ns_log Notice "Sessie: $si Opgevraagd: $srcfile Formaat: 
$desttype"
    ns_returnnotfound
  }      if {$type_srcfile == "application/msword"} {
  if {$desttype == "text/plain"} {
    set tmp_destfile "$tmp_filename.txt"

    exec $appdir/antiword -m  /usr/local/lib/antiword/8859-1.txt 
     -t $srcfile >$tmp_destfile
 
    #ns_returnfile $conn 200 "text/plain" $tmp_destfile
    ns_respond -status 200 -type "text/plain" -file $tmp_destfile
 
    ns_unlink $tmp_destfile
  } elseif {$desttype == "application/pdf"} {
    set tmp_tmp "$tmp_filename.ps"
    set tmp_destfile "$tmp_filename.pdf"
 
    exec "$appdir/antiword" -m /usr/local/lib/antiword/8859-1.txt 
     -p a4 $srcfile ">$tmp_tmp"
    exec gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite 
      -sOutputFile=$tmp_destfile -c save pop -f
    #ns_returnfile $conn 200 "application/pdf" $tmp_destfile
    ns_respond -status 200 -type "application/pdf" -file 
     $tmp_destfile
 
    ns_unlink $tmp_tmp
    ns_unlink $tmp_destfile
  } else {
    ns_log Notice "Sessie: $si Opgevraagd: $srcfile Formaat: 
$desttype"
    ns_returnnotfound
  }

Not what you were looking for, but interesting...