[Leaplist] can anyone help convert a .pub file to

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Sun, 2008-10-19 at 11:57 -0400, ray wrote:
> something else i can read?  I have several .pub (could be MS Office 
> 2007) that a business associate gave me last night.  I have no means of 
> opening it as i do not own any MS office newer then 2k.  If someone 
> could help with this, that would be great.  Just need it converted to 
> something I can read under Linux or OSx.

Here's a question ...

Can you convert it to anything Microsoft Word can read?
HINT:  You cannot.  ;)

Understand Microsoft maintains no less than three (3), separate,
commercially sold (not including the RTF and other non-sense "standards/
non-standards", or the new DOCX OOXML format) document formats that are
utterly _incompatible_:  

- DOC = Microsoft Word
- PUB = Microsoft Publisher
- WPS = Microsoft Works

WPS is a joke.  So bad that companies outlaw it and home consumers are
not only screwed when it comes pre-installed, but are screwed again when
home consumers upgrade to Word (an $100 option coming from Works) and
find out they can't read their WPS files in Word.  For one version,
Microsoft actually started bundling Word with Works, but they ended that
very quickly when it started affecting their OEM and retail sales.  They
went back to the "oh, upgrade to full Word for $100" (as well as "oh,
upgrade to full Office for only $300, or $400 for this option, or $500
for 'Premium'" -- easily 3-5x the OEM price in each case).

PUB is interesting.  Unlike DOC, WPS and other formats that are not even
"proprietary standards" (because Microsoft changes them), PUB is
actually a "lightweight" desktop publishing (DTP) approach with _strong_
formatting.  I.e., Microsoft actually makes PUB a decent, "proprietary"
format in PUB.  E.g., my wife can read her PUB 97 documents in PUB 2007
without issues (unlike anyone who attempts Word 97 in Word 2007, and
used actual Word 97 or 2000 to generate them, not
"modified/incompatible" Word XP or 2003 ;).

Unfortunately, _nothing_ else reads/uses them.
This will _not_ change anytime soon either.

About.COM confirms this:  
  http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/publisher/f/share_pubfiles.htm  

There isn't even an option to save in Microsoft Publisher to MS Word.
Why?  MS Word does _not_ have the layout capable of dealing with MS
Publisher's strict layout, let alone MS Word changes way too much.
Right now the "work around" is for the MS Publisher user to:  

- Open Publisher
- Load PUB Document
- Highlight Entire Document
- Edit -> Copy
- Open Word
- Edit -> Paste

Various attributes and meta-data will be warped, but it will get at
least the "text" and anything else that may break down into similar
graphics or other raster as well as vector formats.  But it will be
_junk_.

The majority of Desktop Publishing (DTP) applications are heavily
_proprietary_.  I.e., you must invest in them or not, and that's a
lifelong-choice when you do.

Fortunately, there is an open source program.  It's not only good, it's
on _steroids_.  I.e., it's comparable to Adobe InDesign.  It's been also
faster to support several of Adobe's own standards-based formats, like
PDF/A, than Adobe's own products.

The program is Scribus:  
  http://www.scribus.net/  

Scribus is a fully feature DTP. I can bring in text from OpenOffice.org
and other programs, directly.  That's what it does best, "press ready."
It does graphics and many other things far better than MS Publisher
could ever dream of.  And unlike MS Publisher, which is designed for
home desktop printers (and not very reproducible over time at athat),
Scribus produces _industry_standard_ output formats.  Again, "press
ready."

If anyone prefers and uses DTP approaches, myself included, make them
aware of Scribus, period.  Get them to move over for all new documents.
Doesn't help them with past documents.  But it solves the problem for
the future.



-- 
Bryan J  Smith              Professional, Technical Annoyance
mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org  http://www.linkedin.com/in/bjsmith
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           Fission Power:  An Inconvenient Solution


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