libwps is a library (for use by word procesors, for example) for importing the Microsoft Works word processor file format. As of December 2006, the project is new, but it imports Works format versions 2, 3, 4, 5 (aka 2000), and 8 with some formatting. The scope of this project is just a Works word processor import filter, so there are no plans for supporting an export filter, spreadsheets, or databases.
For status and current priorities, see libwps notes. This document includes a table to show which features are supported in which versions of the Works file format.
See bug tracker.
libwps has been integrated into some OpenOffice.org variants including NeoOffice, Ubuntu, Go-OOo.org, and OxygenOffice.
This project libwps is producing a library (for programmers) and a console-based document converter, so most people should wait a while until libwps is integrated in to a word processor such as OpenOffice.org, Abiword, and KOffice. However, brave or impatient souls can check out the SVN trunk, compile it, and use the wps2html program.
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Do you own a copy of Works or any Works documents? I'm looking for a set of specially designed reference documents from certain versions of Works (see notes). Also, it would be nice to have mass quantities of freely-licensed (non-confidential/redistributable) Works documents to find crashes. If you can help send me a message (or here).
To make libwps very easy to develop and for applications to integrate, libwps is built on top of libwpd (a WordPerfect import library, which is already used in OpenOffice.org, AbiWord, and KWord). The WordPerfect and Works file formats are not related, but libwpd's basic code and API are convenient for libwps.
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libwps is written by Andrew Ziem (OpenOffice.org Ninja) and Fridrich Strba, and libwps is based on libwpd.