WordLink - what's it all about?

1. To use WordLink, a copy of Microsoft Word 97 or later must be properly installed for the user running upCast on the very same Windows machine. upCast quasi remote-controls Word to perform the conversion from .doc binary format to RTF, which is the native format upCast works on.

2. To install WordLink, start upCast and choose "Install WordLink" from the Extras menu. Follow the instructions displayed. You have to do this only once. If the menu item is grayed out (disabled), WordLink can not be used on your system configuration. If you think that on your system, WordLink should be possible, please let us know.

3. Relaunch upCast for WordLink to be in effect.

4. Now check in Help/System Information..., that the Java/COM bridge is installed and WordLink is available. If it isn't, please contact infinity-loop Tech Support.

5. You can now also convert .doc files. Please note that this is not a new import filter, which remains "RTF 1.6", but that you will now be able to also select .doc files in the file chooser for the input file. (If WordLink is not installed, you can only select .rtf files here.)

6. During conversion, in the progress bar, you will briefly see an additional step displayed, "Pre-converting ...", which indicates that your .doc is currently converted to RTF format by the installed copy of Word.

 User's manual: WordLink

The XHTML export filter's output looks strange in my browser. Some lists seem to indent indefinitely and do not nest properly when I look at them with e.g. Internet Explorer 5 on my Windows machine. Why?

This is a problem with IE (and maybe other browsers, as well). When you look at the source code, you will most probably find minimized XHTML tags like <br /> or <li /> in the area the problems occur. upCast writes these in its effort to provide efficient, short output files. The browser erroneously treats this as an opening element only and nests following elements into it, which leads to wrong rendering results.

So, there's nothing wrong with the XHTML code output from, but the browser you use for display does not handle XHTML correctly (yet).

For an intermediate solution, you might want to try to use a different browser for viewing that doesn't exhibit this problem.

When I call importFile("myfile.rtf"), I get a NullPointerException.

You must specify the global parameter outputDir before importing a document:

server.setGlobalParameter( "outputDir", new String( "/volume/dir/subdir/" ) );

When I call exportFile("myfile.xml"), I get an Exception.

You must specify an absolute path for exportFile(). If you have set the global parameter outputDir, you may also specify a file name relative to that directory.

I get a NullPointerException when reading a document containing images.

Make sure you have specified image conversion settings for all possible images in the source document. Since you can never be sure which images will be present, simply set up image handling completely by using an appropriate code sequence like

//WMF
ue.setImportFilterParameter( imfilterID, "WMFDestFormat",
                                  new String( "JPEG" ) );
//EMF
ue.setImportFilterParameter( imfilterID, "EMFDestFormat",
                                  new String( "UseWMFSubstitute" ) );
// JPEG
ue.setImportFilterParameter( imfilterID, "JPEGDestFormat",
                                  new String( "unchanged" ) );
// PNG
ue.setImportFilterParameter( imfilterID, "PNGDestFormat",
                                  new String( "unchanged" ) );
// PICT
ue.setImportFilterParameter( imfilterID, "PICTDestFormat",
                                  new String( "unchanged" ) );

or a set-up corresponding to your requirements. See also the upCast Help.