Re: importing .dot files

Paul Cubbage (pcubbage@ix.netcom.com)
Tue, 23 Nov 1999 16:55:56 -0800

Shaw Terwilliger wrote:
>
> Danny Faught wrote:
> > When I run AbiWord on a Microsoft document template (.dot) file, it
> > displays garbage. If I rename the file to have a .doc extension,
> > AbiWord makes a reasonable attempt to display it. Are .dot files not
> > supported?
>
> AbiWord currently doesn't recognize ".dot" as an extension that means
> anything. Its default fall-back routing in such a situation is to
> assume it's plain text, and read it as such. If, though, the file
> has an extension of ".doc", it goes ahead with a word import. I'm not
> very keen on the exact differences between word documents and templates
> (I know they share a similar format). Someone from the wv team could
> probably give more detail on how Word's templates can be parsed.

Templates (.dot) are identical to Word (.doc) files but all of the
formatting in them applies to the current document. In Word, if you
create a New file and use the default then it has the normal.dot file
formats. Some templates have Visual Basic macros to help you fill out
the document e.g. your company name in a fax template.

>
> In the future, AbiWord will add support for Microsoft Word document
> templates. Right now it has no such feature, so it wouldn't know
> what to do with the file. Until then, apparently it sounds as though
> importing them (if only to grab their textual content) is somewhat
> working. :)
>
> --
> Shaw Terwilliger

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