Word XML format and how to deal with it

Post here those questions, bug reports and suggestions for SoftMaker Office 2021 for Windows that do not fit in any of the application-specific subforums.
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phpony
Posts: 4
Joined: Sun Oct 03, 2021 4:30 pm

Word XML format and how to deal with it

Post by phpony »

Yes, having SoftMaker Office is good and nice and everything works great and I'm all happy with it's simple design and brilliant performance, so I bought the license and installed this program for every member of family. And at beginning everyone was happy too, cause it looks and feels a lot like Office 2007, and opens/saves both doc, docx, odt and may other things. And that's where I've got myself into problem.

There's this ugly bad thing in the World of Documents and Spreadsheets, called Word XML format, and SoftMaker Office 2021 lacks the support of it. And there's Russian government site, that generates doc files with forms in this exact format. I'm myself can find proper online converter, or start LibreOffice on my linux laptop and convert the file to docx. But my elder relatives can't. Them just calling me saying "the program is not working".

So, I'm looking for a solution here. I saw a multiple topics on this forum that end up with dev's answers "SoftMaker doesn't support that" and being closed and I fully understand this point. I'm not demanding this format to be implemented. I'm in search of any hassle-free workaround for this case. Maybe some piece of software that can be associated with all doc files, which silently converts them to docx and then opens SoftMaker for converted file; or maybe some kind of plugin for SoftMaker Office that does the same; or some vbs script - anything that can makes TextMaker and PlanMaker just "open" those "doc" and "xls" files with simple double-click without any additional steps.

Anyone knows such solutions?
phpony
Posts: 4
Joined: Sun Oct 03, 2021 4:30 pm

Re: Word XML format and how to deal with it

Post by phpony »

In my research I've found an word2html.xsl file published by Microsoft in 2004. This template file transforms Word XML document to HTML document.

word2html.xsl.zip
(23.44 KiB) Downloaded 123 times

For example, if I copy contents of Word XML .doc file and contents of word2html.xsl into this online parser- I get the correct HTML presentation of document. And this generated HTML document can be opened in TextMaker without problems and seems identical with original bein opened in MS Office app.

So, this doesn't looks like this is an unsolvable programming problem. It just simple task that needs some automation?
SuperTech
SoftMaker Team
SoftMaker Team
Posts: 2935
Joined: Wed Mar 11, 2020 5:31 pm

Re: Word XML format and how to deal with it

Post by SuperTech »

We apologize for the inconvenience but as you said, this feature is not there in TextMaker as it's Word 2003's file format. But I have forwarded the request to our product management...
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