Could this be done?
Hi all,
Some time ago Ward Turner replied to a query of Kat's with some code to extract
the text from an MS Word file. I liked the idea, so wrote a simple program that
uses his idea. It works, so I began thinking of other files to extract text
from, such as Outlook Express .dbx files, and others. That led to thinking about
text extraction in general, and to the next step: file conversion.
And that led to the idea of "Vertex", from conVERT EXtract which is merely an
idea at the moment (and if I have to code it it will probably remain an idea).
Is it possible to write a Windows program that could have a conversion or
extraction feature added just by plopping an include file in its directory? If
so, then anyone could add a specialized function to the "shell program", either
for personal use, or to share with everyone. This would amount to a
collaboration without the need to communicate about it. The author of the
"shell" would give a format for the include files that everyone could follow.
Painless "add-ins" or "plug-ins", is the idea.
A way of thinking about this is to imagine a FROM and a TO menu item. The TO
would show options according to what was chosen in the FROM, e.g. if a user chose
JPG in FROM, then BMP, PNG, etc. would show in the TO. If TEXT were chosen in
FROM, then HTML would be an option in TO.
I like the idea of a program's capability growing constantly as people have new
ideas and needs.
--Quark
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Not Categorized, Please Help
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