It’s probably true to say that Open Source software now has better handling of many of these ancient formats than any current product from the companies that originally created those formats.

I can't say I've tried it, but I stumbled across PyODConverter which is a python program that makes a connection to libreoffice/openoffice and gets libreoffice to provide file type conversions. Most of the source code seems to be in the __init__.py file here... https://github.com/tyrannosaurus/pyodconverter/tree/master/PyODConverter I see "MS Word 97" .doc files get a mention, but its not looking good for those old .wps Microsoft Works files. cheers, Ian.

Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2015 16:13:39 +1200 From: ldo(a)geek-central.gen.nz To: wlug(a)list.waikato.ac.nz Subject: [wlug] The Document Liberation, one year after

The Document Liberation is an offshoot of The Document Foundation (responsible for LibreOffice) to manage all the handling of proprietary/legacy document formats in a form that can be reused by other projects, not just LibreOffice. I like the name of the framework library they created: “librevenge”--the aim, of course, being to strike a blow against all the companies locking up users’ data in undocumented, proprietary formats which they then abandoned.

For example, look at the support for Microsoft Works--anybody else even remember what that was? (Puts hand up.) It’s probably true to say that Open Source software now has better handling of many of these ancient formats than any current product from the companies that originally created those formats.

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