While I thought OpenOffice.org (OOo) would read/write WordPerfect docs, I find no control for this, or mentions in the online help.

To quote a friend of mine, "Well, read the [link|http://linuxmafia.com/wpfaq/future.html#ALTERNATIVES|FAQ]." *grin*

That is, there's an alpha-stage filter project, run out of a SourceForge project page, with (if memory serves) development shared between the OpenOffice.org Writer people and the AbiWord people. Progress isn't very fast because there doesn't seem to be heavy effort being put into it. They've bestowed on the underlying library a "version 0.5" moniker for the latest release, which version you can use for command-line conversions. By contrast, the "writerfilter" version, i.e., the OpenOffice.org Writer plug-in filter, currently remains at "version 0.1", which sounds a bit scary.

Me, I've had excellent luck in the past using the wp2latex command-line filter to translate .wpd documents into TeX, and from there to whatever I want using LaTeX stuff, but clearly this isn't what a non-technical office worker wants. Sites that need to do a one-time conversion of legacy .wpd documents into .rtf, .sxw, or something else useful will find the available command-line tools to serve nicely (batching is so nice!), but will have a minor dilemma if they're obliged to have ongoing bidirectional conversion.

Some of the proprietary suites do include robust .wpd filters (Anywhere Office, Ability Linux, TextMaker for Linux).

Rick Moen
rick@linuxmafia.com