Good Word doc -> plain text conversion

[me-5yx05kfkO/aqeI1yJSURBw at public.gmane.org (Matthew Gillen)]

On 09/20/2010 03:43 PM, jc-8FIgwK2HfyJMuWfdjsoA/w at public.gmane.org wrote:
> Laura Conrad wrote:
> | >>>>> "John" ==   <jc-8FIgwK2HfyJMuWfdjsoA/w at public.gmane.org> writes:
> |     John> Anyone here have advice on programs (scriptable and  usable
> |     John> on linux) that convert Word docs to plain text?
> |
> | I get reasonably good results with wvText.
> 
> Thanks; I hadn't heard of that one, so I'll have to try it out.
> 
> Funny thing: It appears to use lynx when it's available, so of course
> I decided to use lynx to download it.  First, I googled for wvText on
> the handiest machine, which turned up lots of info.  Then I tried the
> same  on  the  server where I want to use wvText.  When I typed "lynx
> google.com" on that (Debian) machine,  it  hung,  and  after  several
> minutes,  timed  out.   I  tried a few other URLs there, and they all
> worked. Next, I tried "lynx google.com" on a few other machines where
> I have accounts, and it worked instantly on all of them.
> 
> So far, it's only "lynx google.com" on that one machine  that  hangs.
> That  box  is  the  firewall/gateway/router  at our house, so I tried
> "lynx google.com" on several others (OSX,  Ubuntu)  behind  it,  with
> success  every  time.  It's only "lynx google.com" on that one server
> that fails. Change the browser, the URL or the machine, and it works.
> 
> Not that this has anything to do with wvText or decrypting Word docs,
> of course.  But it did soak up an hour of bemused time, and I haven't
> found any clues for the hangs. Lynx merely says "Unable to connect to
> remote  host",  with no further details.  The problem can't be google
> rejecting  the  connection,  because  that   connection   should   be
> indistinguishable from those from the two machines behind the server,
> and they work.  It's not due to  a  config  problem  on  the  server,
> because  lynx there can connect to lots of other machines without any
> problems.  Curious ...

My money is on IPv6.  I betting your server machine has IPv6 enabled, and
someone somewhere along the line has IPv6 screwed up (particularly their
IPv6 DNS; I've noticed a lot of issues with those).  The other browsers
probably all default to IPv4 DNS lookups, so they work fine (even though
they are on the IPv6-enabled machine, they don't use IPv6-specific DNS lookups).

You didn't specify which browser you were using on your server, but if it
was firefox, type "about:config" in the address bar, then put 'ipv6' in the
filter bar, and set the value of network.dns.disableIPv6 to 'true'.  See if
that solves the problem.

HTH,
Matt