[Libwpd-devel] WPMac files with WorldScript fonts?

[Edward M. <em...@co...>]

Hello,

Recently I was asked to help someone convert hundreds of WPMac files that include Japanese Kanji, files that were created on old Macs that had the Japanese Language Kits installed.

It seems - I could be wrong - that libwpd doesn't convert the characters in those files. The method I found for converting them was a bit roundabout:

Use a PowerPC Mac that runs OS 10.4 and "Classic" with the Japanese Language Kit installed. Open the WPMac files in WPMac in Classic. Copy the contents of the file to the clipboard. Paste the contents of the file from the Clipboard into OS X's TextEdit or any other unicode-aware Mac application. Save the resulting file as an RTF or DOC file. The resulting file opens correctly in LibreOffice, Pages, Word, etc.

This method obviously requires obsolete hardware and software. I would guess that it would require an enormous amount of effort to support double-byte CJK and other WorldScript-based scripts in libwpd, and that the potential need for it is far too small to justify the effort. But is this something that might someday be possible in the future?

Edward Mendelson
Contributing Editor
PC Magazine