The Office_Open_XML format has been the standard since 2007, and you don't need proprietary software to work with it.

There is a lot to unpack in that assertion, it's all the harder since Groklaw.net is now offline. You don't need proprietary software to work with OOXML but then OOXML is not .docx and part of the question here is about MS Word documents which default to the proprietary .docx series.

Yes, OOXML aka ISO/IEC 29500 is one format standard, it was whipped in great haste up to compete with the actual universal format, OpenDocument Format aka ISO 26300. Both are technically open standards, but while OOXML weighs in at well over 6,000 pages it is incompletely documented and no-one not even Microsoft implements it or even can implement it. In contrast ODF is fully documented, and fully implemented in Calligra, LibreOffice, and several others. ODF is already partially implemented in MSO, but that work appears to have stalled as MS has gone back to proprietary formats like the .docx series. Also, OOXML suffers from a tremendous amount of NIH while ODF re-uses many existing standards for components.

As for the original question, converting from markdown to HTML would be one, as mentioned by nerdvana and anonymous monk. Markdown is rather close to plain text with minimal structure and it is easy to convert between markdown and HTML using Perl. However, structure is the key and one can go from more to less but one cannot automatically produce more detail from less detail.

Milti, could you please explain more about the task?

In reply to Re^3: Plain Text To HTML by mldvx4
in thread Plain Text To HTML by Milti

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.