Word Documents

[John Costello]

On Thu, 8 Dec 2005, Sam Smith wrote:
> On Wed, 7 Dec 2005, Steve Mynott wrote:
> > On Tue, Dec 06, 2005 at 10:49:57PM +0000, Sam Smith typed:
> >> Does anyone know if there's a way to tell, from perl (on
> >> Unix) whether a word document has track changes turned on?
> >
> > Why don't you save a document without track changes and then with
> > track changes on and try a binary compare to work out the difference?
> >
> > (Although admittedly modern versions of Word documents always seem to
> > think they have been changed after opening and you may find several
> > binary changes).
> 
> I tried that, it didn't help.
> 
> I was hoping that it would be something like read byte X and
> jump to the offset stored in it. It isn't. Which is no
> surprise.
> 
> I'll see if we have an ASP server with word installed that we can
> borrow.

You might look at the MS Word 8 format (which is 3 revs behind but may 
still provide the necessary info for Word 11 with regard to tracking 
changes).  See <http://www.wotsit.org/search.asp?s=text>.  This does 
discuss revision tracking under the section "Number Revision Mark Data 
(NUMRM)" at the least, possibly elsewhere.  Note that the word doc format 
is under wotsit's section for Text Files/Documents, and not under the 
section for Windows Files.

There's also wvInfo, which I haven't had a chance too look into yet but 
may be useful.  <http://wvware.sourceforge.net/wvInfo.html>

> Sam

John
-----
John Costello - cos at indeterminate dot net
"You cannot propel yourself forward by patting yourself on the back."--Unknown