Viewing Word files at the command line

(Scott Nesbitt) As a Linux user, there are times when you have to play nicely with users of Windows or Mac OS -- such as when they send you Microsoft Word files. When you receive a Word file, you can either follow Richard Stallman's advice and refuse it, or bite the bullet and work with it. Modern Linux word processors -- such as OpenOffice.org Writer, AbiWord, KWord, and TextMaker -- can deal with most Word files. But if you don't want to fire up a word processor in order to read or print the document, you can turn to the command line. A handful of small but powerful Linux command line utilities make viewing, printing, and even converting Word files to another format a breeze.