Thank you for your feedback.
We'll seriously try to make the conversion much safer in the next
release of XMLmind Word To XML. (This behavior applies not only to XXE
add-on "Import DOCX", but also to the w2x-app desktop application,
http://www.xmlmind.com/w2x/_distrib/doc/w2x_app_help/index.html)
However please note that we do not want to make the conversion process
*completely* *safe* at the expense of making the tool tedious to use.
The user is supposed to know what she/she is doing. After all, macOS or
Linux will not prevent you from executing "rm -rf *" in your home
directory. (Yes, this happened to me on my Linux box, thinking I was in
a different directory.)
On 03/17/2019 06:52 PM, Leif Halvard Silli wrote:
I managed to delete the content of a valuable directory today, when
using the Import DOCX addon. (Fortunately, I believe I have a copy of
most of the content.)
At first, I blamed the add-on. Then I blamed myself. But finally, ended
up concluding that the Import DOCX add-on has a serious design flaw. At
first I thought the design flaw was only related to multipage output,
but it appears to be related to any output.
To repeat my experience, do this (using XMLmind XML editor version 8.3
and Word to XML version 1.5.1_01 for XMLmind XML editor vefsion 8.3):
1. Place a DOCX file in a folder. (Make sure that its content is not
very valuable ...)
2. Select Import DOCX from File menu and selected the file to import.
3. Opted 'Multipage XHTML' as output format
* Note that by default, the output directory is the same as the
import directory!
4. Press the Convert button
5. Result: The add-on now displayed a dialog Window telling me the
output folder was not empty, asking me whether I wanted to empty the
output before proceding - with the option Yes (default), No and Cancel.
6. Out of neglect and business, answer 'Yes' (by pressing the Return key).
Thank you for being frank here.
7. Result: Voila! The content of the folder - including the file to be
converted(!) - becomes deleted ... !
8. Because even the file to be converted gets deleted (before
conversion starts), the conversion fails with an error message
* Expected behavior(s):
1. The default action should NEVER be to delete files ....
2. That the very conversion process DID NOT delete by the very file
to be converted
3. If the output should go in a clea folder (and not be mixed with
original file), the the default output directory ought to be a
new - to be created - empty folder. (E.g. if converting the file
'./foo.docx' to multipage XHTML, the output files (file1.xhtml,
file2.xhtml etc) ought to be place inside the foler './foo/file1'.
4. If there already is a 'foo' folder (from an earlier converstion,
for instance), the conversion should place its output files
inside an enumerated folder such as 'foo-1'
5. At least as long as the Add-on cannot avoid deleting even the
file to be converted, the option to empty the folder before
conversion, should not even exist. BUt even if that oversight
can be handled, it should not be as easy as it is now, to
accidentically delete the conten of the output folder!
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