MS Word comments from org-mode

Posted February 25, 2023 at 11:49 AM | categories: orgmode, docx | tags:

Updated February 25, 2023 at 03:48 PM

TL;DR:

Today I learned you can make a Word document from org-mode with Word comments in them. This could be useful when working with collaborators maybe. The gist is you use html for the comment, then export to markdown or html, then let pandoc convert those to docx. A comment in HTML looks like this: 

<span class="comment-start" author="jkitchin">Comment text</span>The text being commented on <span class="comment-end"></span>

Let's wrap that in a link for convenience. I use a full display so it is easy to see the comment. I only export the comment for markdown and html export, for everything else we just use the path. We somewhat abuse the link syntax here by using the path for the text to comment on, and the description for the comment. 

(org-link-set-parameters
 "comment"
 :export (lambda (path desc backend)
           (if (member backend '(md html))
               (format "<span class=\"comment-start\" author=\"%s\">%s</span>%s<span class=\"comment-end\"></span>"
                       (user-full-name)
                       desc
                       path)
             ;; ignore for other backends and just use path
             path))
 :display 'full
 :face '(:foreground "orange"))

Now, we use it like this This is the commentThis is the text commented on.

In org-mode it looks like:

To get the Word doc, we need some code that first exports to Markdown, and then calls pandoc to convert that to docx. Here is my solution to that. Usually you would put this in a subsection tagged with :noexport: but I show it here to see it. Running this block generates the docx file and opens it. Here I also leverage org-ref to get some citations and cross-references. 

(require 'org-ref-refproc)
(let* ((org-export-before-parsing-hook '(org-ref-cite-natmove ;; do this first
                                        org-ref-csl-preprocess-buffer
                                        org-ref-refproc))
       (md (org-md-export-to-markdown))
       (docx (concat (file-name-sans-extension md) ".docx")))
  (shell-command (format "pandoc -s %s -o %s" md docx))
  (org-open-file docx '(16)))

The result looks like this in MS Word:

How a comment looks in Word.

That is pretty remarkable. There are some limitations in Markdown, e.g. I find the tables don't look good, not all equations are converted, some cross-references are off. Next we add some more org-features and try the export with HTML.

1. export features for test

Test cross-references, references, equations, etc…

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Table 1: A table.
x y
1 3
3 6

We have equations:

\begin{equation} \label{org9973acf} y = mx + b \end{equation}
  • bullet1
    • nested bullet
  • bullet2

some defintions:

emacs
greatest editor
  1. item 1
  2. item 2

One equation: \(e^{i\pi} - 1 = 0\)

A second equation:

\begin{equation} e^{i\pi} - 1 = 0 \end{equation}

3. Alternate build with HTML.

Here we consider For example, htmlalternate build approaches.

Run this to get the docx file. I find this superior; it has references, cross-references, equations, tables, figures, etc. Even a title. 

(let* ((org-export-before-parsing-hook '(org-ref-csl-preprocess-buffer
                                         org-ref-refproc))
       (org-html-with-latex 'dvipng)
       (f (org-html-export-to-html))
       (docx (concat (file-name-sans-extension f) ".docx")))
  (shell-command (format "pandoc -s %s -o %s" f docx))
  (org-open-file docx '(16)))

Copyright (C) 2023 by John Kitchin. See the License for information about copying.

org-mode source

Org-mode version = 9.5.5

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