README

Leaving Word Processors Behind
------------------------------

What is it?
 - some stuff I've collected to help writers migrate away from using word
   processors and toward using text editors, such as FocusWriter

What does it do?
 - It will walk over a directory heirarchy and dump every .odt file therein
   to .txt in MarkDown syntax.
 - Eventually it should also do RTF and other document formats supported by
   OpenOffice.  Even more eventually, it should do formats supported by 
   AbiWord or other scriptable open source word processors too.
 - Eventually it should have Nautilus menu items to let you right-click on a 
   file and dump it.

Why do I want it?
 - I don't know.  Maybe you don't.  But I did, so I cobbled together the 
   pieces and I didn't want to lose my work so I put it in this repository.
   Here you go.

Can I use it?
 - You'll need to have the Python libraries elementtree and markdown, a 
   bourne-compatible shell, and make.  If you know what that means, or 
   know someone who does, then you can probably use it.

Well, how do I use it?
 - Get software.  Try checking out the git repository.
 - make all # will test that you have the python dependencies and install 
   to ~/bin
 - Now you've got it installed you can use it.  For example, to convert every
   OpenOffice document under your home directory in one go, try:
   cd ~
   find . -iname '*.odt' -exec oodump {} \;

Who do I have to thank?
 - Thank Aaron Swartz, John Gruber, and Yuri Takhteyev.