antiword

What it is and what it does

Antiword is a thin Python wrapper around LibreOffice's command-line text conversion tool. It invokes `libreoffice --convert-to txt` to convert documents to plain text, capturing the output and cleaning up temporary files automatically. The package has no runtime dependencies beyond requiring LibreOffice itself to be available on the system.

The package is designed as a convenience layer for developers who need to extract text from documents programmatically. Since its single release in October 2021, it has received no updates or maintenance. It requires Python 3.9+ and is suitable only for environments where LibreOffice is already installed or can be reliably provisioned.

Use it for:

• Extract text from Word documents or other office formats in a Python script
• Batch convert document collections to plain text for text processing pipelines
• Build document indexing or search systems that need text extraction from office files

Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying

Wraps LibreOffice's text conversion to convert documents to plain text output via a Python interface.

No. The package is abandoned with no updates since 2021-10-19, making it a maintenance liability. For active document-to-text conversion, use maintained alternatives. If you must wrap LibreOffice, consider writing a small inline helper rather than depending on unmaintained code.

Install

antiword on PyPI

pip install antiword

uv add antiword

poetry add antiword

Installing antiword

Before you install

Low install friction with no runtime dependencies. However, the package is abandoned—last release was 2021-10-19 with no commits since. Requires Python 3.9+ and depends on LibreOffice being installed on the system.

License in practice

MIT license is permissive, allowing commercial and private use with minimal restrictions.

Quickstart

pip install antiword

import antiword
text_output = antiword.convert(document_path)

LibreOffice must be installed and available on the system PATH for the package to function.

Verify before relying

• Whether LibreOffice must be pre-installed or if the package handles installation
• Which document formats are supported beyond what LibreOffice can convert
• Performance characteristics and memory usage for large documents

Package facts

Evidence: antiword-0.1.0-py3-none-any.whl

Tags

More Text Processing packages