MsOfficeAttachmentsAsHTMLPlugin

This is the support hub for MsOfficeAttachmentsAsHTMLPlugin.

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• Extension download and info page: MsOfficeAttachmentsAsHTMLPlugin
• If you need help, please Ask a question on MsOfficeAttachmentsAsHTMLPlugin.
• If you want to report a bug, go to Tasks.MsOfficeAttachmentsAsHTMLPlugin where you can see already-submitted bugs and where you can submit a new bug report.
• If you are a developer wishing to discuss development or new features, join the discussion at Development.MsOfficeAttachmentsAsHTMLPlugin

Posted but not answered questions

• Attachments are not converted or the converted content not shown last updated on 22 Aug 2016 - 07:45
• exec of wvHtml ... failed last updated on 06 Jul 2012 - 21:18
• abiword images last updated on 07 Sep 2010 - 14:38
• "Error Saving Topic" after uploading .doc last updated on 27 Aug 2010 - 12:41

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Active Tasks

Id	Summary	Priority	Current State
Item11587	Calls to deprecated readTopicText and saveTopicText are in several public extensions	Normal	Confirmed
Item9172	After topic content is converted from .doc, topic parent changes to none	Low	New

MS Word 2007 .docx Support

Tested on debian lenny (5.0.5) & wv 1.2.4-2 & abiword 2.6.4-5

The default word --> HTML converter (wvHtml) looks not compatible with MS Word 2007 docx files.

By executing the basis conversion from console (/usr/bin/wvHtml test.docx test.html) the created html file is empty (0 bits).

With MsOfficeAttachmentsAsHTMLPlugin enabled no docx file can be attached at all as soon as the plugin is enabled (error message, not able to save topic).

To solve it:

• install abiword
• change in the configuration of the plugin the executed command (configure --> Extensions --> MsOfficeAttachmentsAsHTMLPlugin) into

/usr/bin/abiword --to=html %SRC|F% %ATTACHDIR|F%/%DEST|F%

Both doc & docx attachment now work (the formatting of the doc files is almost 100% correct, the formatting of the docx files is at 95% correct).

abiword & special characters

abiword generates html Files with encoding="UTF-8". This means as soon as your original doc/docx attachment contain special characters (umlauts etc etc ) those characters will not be shown correctly in foswiki thought the converted html file unless you set:

{Site}{CharSet} = 'utf-8';

in configure under localization.

abiword & images ==> OPEN PROBLEM

The images are embedded in a word file. When a Word file is transformed into an html file the images are extracted and referenced via an URL link in the html file. The way the image files are extracted (the name they get, the "path" in the file system they go to, the way they are referenced i the html file) are different in every converter program.

In particoular:

• wvHtml extracts in this way:

/usr/bin/wvHtml Test.doc Test.html
Filesystem ==>
~/tests/wvHtml/Test.html
~/tests/wvHtml/Test0.jpg
URL reference ==>
<img width="250" height="163" alt="0x01 graphic" src="Test0.jpg"><br>

• abiword extracts in this way:

~/tests/abiword # /usr/bin/abiword --to=html Test.doc
Filesystem ==>
~/tests/abiword/Test.html
~/tests/abiword/Test.html_files/0.png
URL reference ==>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align:left;margin-bottom:10pt"><img style="width:63.5mm" alt="" src="Test.html_files/0.png" /></p>

This unfortunately leads to an "out-of-the-box-incompatibility" with foswiki.

1. The {Plugins}{MsOfficeAttachmentsAsHTMLPlugin}{filters} substitution string (which is used to transform the URL of the image into something foswiki likes : http://hostname.domain/foswiki/pub/<Web>/<Topic>/image ) does not work like it is. So no substutution is done i.e. it does not work.
2. The "subdirectory structure" the images go into after the extraction with abiword is not "foswiki" compatible (even if I point to http://hostname.domain/foswiki/pub/<Web>/<Topic>/<Attach>.html_files/image the image is not "loaded"/"found"). So the plugin should at the file system level move the images from /foswiki/pub/<Web>/<Topic>/<Attach>.html_files/image to /foswiki/pub/<Web>/<Topic>/image.
3. This means since there could be more attach in one topic the name of the image files must be changed in the copy into the pub directory of the topic such that the attach belonging is clear and no one of them will be overwritten.
4. Step 2. and 3. imply a change in the Perl code of the plugin i.e. in order not to break to compatibility with wvHtml a "case" option should be coded (case wvHtml .... , case abiword .....)