Some sweating was necessary but the result is worth it. To avoid that OpenOffice.org be too far behind AbiWord your servant came today with a Microsoft Works import filter for OpenOffice.org based on libwps library that has been blogged about last week. I would even gladly provide screenshots, but the CWS wpsimport01, where the new filter lives, is based on milestone m196 that has some serious antialiasing issues on X11 platforms and thus the pictures would be just not nice at all. Nevertheless, it will be resynced several times as one writes the specifications, so stay tuned for the screenshots.
The integration strategy would be following: first integrate the CWS fs08 that fixes some memory problems and crasher issues with the WordPerfect import filter. Make, in the same CWS, build the writerperfect module with as little warnings as it is humanly possible and refactor it to make it much easier for other libraries reusing libwpd's public API to be plugged into it. After that, if a release of libwps happens and if inclusion of the tarball passes through all the necessary paperwork, integrate the CWS wpsimport01.
As a bottom-line, the refactoring in fs08 should make a possible shift to the use of the new filter API, that Henning blogged about, almost transparent.
So, now it is the time to study the new API in writerfilter2 and see whether the libwpd-family libraries can use it directly, or some modifications should be proposed
