WvWare (previously known as mswordview) is a library that allows access to Microsoft Word files. It can load and parse the Word 2000, Word 97, Word 95, and Word 6 file formats. (Work is underway to support reading earlier formats as well: Word 2 documents are converted to plain text.)

This package provides the following programs:

* wvWare: Converts to HTML and LaTeX. It's used by a small army of helper scripts able to preview Word documents and convert them to various other formats, like PostScript, PDF, DVI, etc.

* wvRTF: Converts to Microsoft's Rich Text Format.

* wvSummary: Displays the summary information stream of all OLE2 files, i.e. Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, Access, etc.

* wvVersion: Outputs the version of the Word format a document is stored in.

Note that conversion to DVI, PostScript, or PDF requires the 'texlive' package; PDF conversion also requires Ghostscript. Having ELinks, Links, or Lynx will greatly improve the plain text output. ImageMagick may help with the quality of images. If you wish to preview Word documents from the comfort of your mail reader, install a PostScript viewer like gv.