News

Tuesday, November 16^th 2010: After more then five years of development, libwpd 0.9.0 and writerperfect 0.8.0 have been released. libwpd 0.9.0 is not backward compatible with libwpd 0.8.14. Both 0.9.x and 0.8.x series are installable in parallel except for the wpd2html and wpd2text tools. The main features of this release are:

• Conversion of page-numbering.
• Conversion of embedded images and text boxes in WP1, WP3, WP5 and WP6 documents.
• Conversion of password protected WP1, WP3, WP42 and WP5 documents.
• Conversion of annotations/comments in WP6 parser.
• Fix some greek characters so that Text written in WP5.1 with Printer Polyglott convert correct.
• Fix unicode mappings of some older Symbol and Dingbats fonts.
• Drop the libgsf dependency in favour of pure C++ implementation of the WPXInputStream interface.
• Fix the footnote/endnote/comment/annotation/textbox writing in wpd2html converter.
• Improve metadata parsing.

The libwpd development team hopes that you enjoy the new functionalities and that you stay tuned for more exciting news.

Monday, November 1^st 2010: After a long hiatus, some news:

• libwpd is now using git for version control.
• More importantly, a new release containing graphics (courtesy of libwpg) and page numbering is coming soon!

Wednesday, October 10^th 2007: After a silent release of libwpd 0.8.11 and of writerperfect/wpd2sxw 0.7.2 in August, libwpd 0.8.12, codename "Barcelona no s'acaba a Catalunya", is out of the door. This release fixes some build issues with gcc 4.3. Among the new features, libwpd 0.8.12 brings an initial conversion of tab set for documents in WP 5.x file-format. It also adds an initial support of tabulators for WP3 and WP5 parser. Thanks to the help of Hubert Figuiere, we are now able to map between Mac font ID and font name for the most used Mac OS 7/8/9 fonts. Last, but not least, this release improves our cross-compilation support for win32 platform.

Friday, June 15^th 2007: libwpd 0.8.10, codename "The show must go on!", has been released. This release fixes a bug where our conversion from floating point numbers to strings might give locale-dependent results. Among other features that made it into this release is an enhanced metadata conversion in WP6 file-format contributed by David Hislop, a possibility to build the wpd2foo tools using Microsoft compiler suites (especially the free-as-beer VS2005 Express Edition). We also added two alternative WPXInputStream implementations which renders libgsf dependency very very optional. The GSFInputStream is thus deprecated and the wpd2foo tools use now the new class.

As usual, libwpd-0.8.10 is API and ABI backward-compatible with all previous versions from the 0.8.x serices. Users are strongly encouraged to upgrade their production environment to this version.

Friday, March 16^th 2007: libwpd 0.8.9, codename "Integers, integers, integers, ...", has been released. This release fixes an integer arithmetic related security issues described as CVE-2007-0002 brought to our attention by iDefense security. An attacker could create a carefully crafted Word Perfect file that could cause an application linked with libwpd, such as OpenOffice, to crash or possibly execute arbitrary code with the current user priviledges if the file was opened by a victim. The libwpd code-base was reviewed by us for other similar integer related issues. Issues discovered were fixed in this release.

Needless to say that libwpd-0.8.9 is API and ABI compatible with all previous versions from the 0.8.x series. Users are encouraged to use in preference this version in their production environment.

Tuesday, January 9^th 2006: libwpd 0.8.8, codename "No codename :-)", has been released. This release fixes two crasher issues inside OpenOffice.org. It also removes a load of compiler warnings and thus making the code more stable and portable. Some marginal performance improvements were also done.

Monday, October 9^th 2006: libwpd 0.8.7, codename "Big Apple", has been released. This release adds support for WordPerfect 1.x for the Mac, further expanding the range of documents that we convert.

Saturday, July 15^th 2006: libwpd 0.8.6, codename "sum1 is someone", has been released. This versions means a considerable improvement of libwpd stability. Enjoy the comparison with libwpd 0.8.5 based on more than 46'000 of random documents:

                   libwpd 0.8.5                libwpd 0.8.6

Total tested:      46675                       46675
Unsupported:         122 ( 0.26%)                 15 ( 0.03%)
                   -----                       -----
Actually tested:   46553 (99.74% import rate)  46660 (99.97% import rate)

Parse exceptions:    660                           0
File exceptions:     555                           9
Unknown errors:        5                           0
Crashes:              13                           0
                   -----                       -----
Total failures:     1233 (2.65% failure rate)      9 (0.02% failure rate)

libwpd 0.8.6 is able to recover and convert even corrupted files, some of which crash recent versions of WordPerfect^tm.

Besides of these stability improvements, libwpd 0.8.6 adds the WP Mac 2.x into the set of our supported file-formats and adds support for header/footer conversion for WP 4.2 documents.

Special thanks for for this version goes to sum1, the amazing AbiWord QA person who collected the 46'675 documents and run the regression tests over and over again for every major commit. THANKS, MR. SUM1!

Saturday, June 24^th 2006: A crasher regression in some rare cases was found by a thorough QA in libwpd 0.8.5 release. So, we uploaded a patch that fixes this regression and we rebuilt all the binaries to include this patch. The source RPM package also contains the fix.

Thursday, June 1^st 2006: After you waited for it patiently for almost six months, libwpd 0.8.5, "reward for your patience", has been released. This version adds header and footer conversion in WP5.x and WP3.x for Macintosh file formats. It adds also the support for footnotes and endnotes in WP5.x file format, improves the conversion of page margins and corrects issues with conversion of the position of tables and tabstops in multicolumn sections. This release fixes several bugs and annoyances. Being a bugfix release, libwpd 0.8.5 is API compatible with all previous versions of 0.8.x series. You are naturally encouraged to upgrade as soon as this news comes your way.

Thursday, December 8 2005: libwpd 0.8.4 has been released. This version contains fixes for building with gcc-4.1.x and for building on MacOSX. It adds conversion of tables in WP5.x file-format. The main changes are in the conversion of documents in format WP3.x for Macintosh - conversion of tables including the colour of the cell background; conversion of font face, font size and font colour information; conversion of sections with multiple columns; and conversion of footnotes and endnotes. This release adds an assignment operator to our WPXString class. Being a bugfix release, libwpd 0.8.4 is binary compatible with all previous versions of 0.8.x series.

Tuesday, October 25 2005: writerperfect/wpd2sxw 0.7.1 has been released. This versions contains just small fixes and makes users fully profit from the changes in libwpd-0.8.3. It is also the last release of our add-on WordPerfect^tm import filter for those that are for any reason still using OpenOffice.org 1.1.x series.

Sunday, October 23 2005: OpenOffice.org 2.0 has been released. This versions has libwpd-based WordPerfect import built in, eliminating the need for most users to download the WriterPerfect package.

Wednesday, August 31 2005: libwpd 0.8.3 has been released. This version improves mainly the handling of list styles, the conversion of paragraph numbering and of counters, as well as the extraction of position information from tabulator function. Moreover, this is the first release of libwpd that contains autopackage build files. Athough this release features many changes in libwpd internals with the aim to follow closer the WordPerfect document stream, it is a bugfix release and is API compatible with libwpd 0.8.0 to 0.8.2.

Wednesday, June 22 2005: libwpd 0.8.2 has been released. This version features an improvement of extended characters handling, especially in WP 5.x documents. Being a bugfix release, it is API compatible with libwpd 0.8.0 and 0.8.1.

Sunday, April 24 2005: libwpd 0.8.1 has been released. This is a bugfix release only, and is API compatible with libwpd 0.8.0

Friday, February 11 2005: libwpd 0.8.0 and wpd2sxw/writerperfect 0.7.0 have been released. This release features enhanced supported for earlier versions of WordPerfect and WordPerfect for Mac, as well as some minor enhancements to the WordPerfect 6 parser. A version of WriterPerfect compatible with this version of libwpd is slated to be released with OpenOffice.org 2.0.

Saturday, July 17 2004: WriterPerfect 0.2.1 has been released and is now available for download. See the comments immediately below on wpd2sxw for details.

Saturday, July 17 2004: wpd2sxw 0.6.1 has been released and is now available for download. It contains some minor improvements to the facility for converting line breaks and paragraph justification. A new WriterPerfect release is also coming soon (with the same improvements), pending a fix to a crasher that seems to occur when the plugin is run in RedHat Fedora.

Wednesday, July 14 2004: libwpd 0.7.2 released. This release fixes many bugs (and even adds a few new features) while preserving ABI compatibility with the 0.7.0 series. All libwpd users are advised to upgrade to this release. New WriterPerfect binaries for Windows will be uploaded soon.

Sunday, February 22 2004: Precompiled Fedora and Windows WriterPerfect binaries now on the download page.

Friday, February 20 2004: Integrated OpenOffice.org filter ("WriterPerfect") released. Precompiled RPM binaries are now available for Ximian OpenOffice.org 1.1. RedHat Fedora and Windows binaries are right around the corner..

Friday, February 6 2004: Binary packages finally released for wpd2sxw 0.6.0. In other news, Fridrich managed to get WriterFilter (our integrated OOo component) compiled on Windows! A release should (really) be coming soon.

Friday, January 31 2004: libwpd 0.7.1 and wpd2sxw 0.6.0 released. This release fixes a serious bug in libwpd's footnote parsing code and updates wpd2sxw for all the new goodies in libwpd.

Thursday, January 15 2004: libwpd 0.7.0 released. This release contains a lot of good stuff, most importantly initial support for WordPerfect(tm) 4.2 and 5.x type documents, and a Windows/MingW build system!

Wednesday, November 12 2003: Thanks to Fridrich Strba, a version of wpd2sxw (WordPerfect 6/7/8/9/10/11 -> OpenOffice.org Writer) for Windows is now available for download. Note that wpd2sxw is a command line only program (proficiency with the DOS prompt is recommended). Integrated OpenOffice.org filters are coming soon for both Windows and Linux.

Saturday, November 8 2003: libwpd 0.6.6 released. This release adds more verbose error reporting. No actual bugs have been fixed in this release.

Friday, October 31 2003: libwpd 0.6.5 released. This release fixes a bug in the parsing mechanism that caused libwpd to 'hang' on various files. All users are advised to upgrade to this release.

Tuesdays, October 6 2003: libwpd 0.6.4 released. This release fixes a bug that could lead to illegal memory accesses, and thus to crashes and other unexpected behavior. All users are *strongly* advised to upgrade to this release.

Friday September 26 2003: libwpd 0.6.3 and wpd2sxw 0.5.2 released. New since last update: different character face properties (redline, outline, blink, etc.) and assorted bugfixes with table colouring and lists. Additionally, libwpd is now being used by the City of Largo to assist with their OpenOffice.org migration. Of particular is interest is this set of expectation documents: judge for yourself how well libwpd is doing.

Sunday September 7 2003: libwpd 0.6.1 and wpd2sxw 0.5.1 are out. The updates are minor (lists updates, fix for a bug which prevented compilation of wpd2sxw on RedHat 7.3), but it's probably worth upgrading anyway. Also added wpd2sxwbatch.pl, a perl script for doing bulk WordPerfect -> OpenOffice.org conversions using wpd2sxw, to the download page. Many thanks to Brent Hasty and Michael Clark for writing this.

Wednesday September 3 2003: Apparently "soon" is relative. In any event, new releases of libwpd and wpd2sxw are now available. Noteable new featurelets include (as promised) header and footer support, Tibetan characterset support, top and bottom margin support, and better table handling. This release also paves the way for an integrated filter for OpenOffice.org. Enjoy.

Tuesday July 8 2003: Updated web-site to include a links section and a better development page. libwpd 0.6.0 (with better table handling and header/footer support) coming soon.

Monday May 26 2003: libwpd 0.5.0 and wpd2sxw 0.4.0 are now released (with support for footnotes, endnotes, table properties, and line spacing). Expect RPMs to be available within the next few days.

Tuesday May 20 2003: Fridrich Strba has created RPMs of libgsf/libwpd/wpd2sxw for users of RedHat 7.3, available here. libwpd 0.5.0 (with many new and exciting features) is coming soon.

Friday April 25 2003: libwpd 0.4.0 and wpd2sxw 0.3.0 are now released (with support for lists and WordPerfect 6.0 documents). libwpd 0.4.0 is now used in development versions of AbiWord (leading up to AbiWord 2.0).

Sunday February 24 2003: Minor problems with the 0.3.0 release forced a last-minute recall. Please download version 0.3.1. Also, wpd2sxw 0.2.0 is now released (with support for all the new goodies in libwpd 0.3.1).

Sunday February 24 2003: We are pleased to report that libwpd version 0.3.0 is now available! Most important new changes include the move to libgsf, which brings us true OLE support. Also, font size and font family properties are now supported.

Sunday February 9 2003: We are pleased to report that libwpd version 0.2.0 is now available! This represents a complete rewrite of libwpd's core functionality, and adds support for tables. Also a  standalone WordPerfect to ooWriter converter have been released, dubbed wpd2sxw. wpd2sxw requires libgsf to function. Please consult the 'README' files included with both releases for more information. NOTE: the writerfilter binaries/source distributions have not been updated for use with libwpd 0.2.0. You must use libwpd version 0.1.0 for this component to work, until it is updated.

Monday January 13 2003: Happy New Year! Work on the libwpd2 branch progresses at a rapid pace (design document needs updating). All future work on libwpd will be carried out on this branch: hopefully we will see tangible results (e.g.: a working ooWriter filter) soon. The ooWriter filter binaries have been updated and are compiled on an experimental Redhat 7.3 chroot environment (see the download section). Please send feedback to William Lachance.

Saturday November 16 2002: Made some minor revisions to the design document.

Thursday November 14 2002: It has been verified that the statically compiled ooWriter binaries will only work on systems with glibc 2.3 (this does NOT include RedHat 7.2). Help generating sane binaries would be appreciated. In other news, a preliminary document on the design of libwpd2 is available and a mailing list for the discussion of libwpd development has been created. Please join if you are interested.

Wednesday November 13 2002: Experimental statically compiled ooWriter binaries available-- please check the README file after unpacking for information on how to install. Decision made to license future versions of the ooWriter filter under the LGPL.

Wednesday November 6 2002: Initial revision of this site. First public source release of libwpd and ooWriter filter.