syhwp

English · 한국어

Pure-Python reader for Korean HWP (.hwp) and HWPX (.hwpx) documents — the file formats produced by Hancom Office / 한글 (Hangul). Read a document and get its text, tables, equations and images as plain text, GitHub-flavored Markdown, or HTML, with a single small dependency and a permissive MIT license.

Reach for syhwp when you need to read or convert .hwp / .hwpx files in Python — for search, RAG / LLM pipelines, data migration, or plain text extraction — and can't use the AGPL-licensed pyhwp.

import syhwp

text = syhwp.extract_text("report.hwp")        # plain text
md   = syhwp.extract_markdown("report.hwpx")   # Markdown (tables as pipe tables)
html = syhwp.extract_html("report.hwp")        # standalone HTML

.hwp (legacy binary) and .hwpx (OWPML) are detected automatically and handled the same way.

Install

pip install syhwp

The only runtime dependency is olefile (BSD). HWPX parsing uses the Python standard library alone. Works on Python 3.9–3.13, on any OS.

Command line

syhwp report.hwp              # Markdown (default)
syhwp report.hwp --text       # plain text
syhwp report.hwpx --html      # HTML
python -m syhwp report.hwp    # equivalent

What the output looks like

A table in the document comes out as a GitHub-flavored Markdown table:

■ Road structure & facilities standard — revision comparison

| Before (2020) | After (2021) | Note |
| --- | --- | --- |
| … design speed 120 110 100 …  stopping sight distance 215 185 155 … | … 225 195 170 … |  |

Equations are surfaced as their script ([수식: …]) and images as a [그림] placeholder, so no content is silently dropped.

Library API

Convenience functions — each takes a path and returns a string:

Structured access via open():

doc = syhwp.open("report.hwp")       # -> Document
doc.version                           # e.g. "5.1.0.1"
doc.text, doc.markdown, doc.html      # rendered forms

for table in doc.tables:              # Table(n_rows, n_cols, cells)
    print(table.to_markdown())
    for cell in table.cells:          # Cell(row, col, text, row_span, col_span)
        ...

for para in doc.paragraphs:           # Paragraph(text)
    print(para.text)

for eq in doc.equations:              # Equation(script)
    print(eq.script)

doc.blocks holds every block in reading order as a Paragraph, Table, Equation, or Image. Errors derive from syhwp.SyhwpError (UnsupportedFormatError, InvalidHwpError, EncryptedDocumentError).

What is supported

• Robust by design: unknown records/elements are skipped, and malformed or corrupt input raises a typed SyhwpError rather than crashing (fuzz-tested).
• No servers, no Java, no Rust — pure Python, one dependency.

Limitations

• Password-protected documents cannot be read — they raise EncryptedDocumentError. Distribution (copy-protected, 배포용) documents are read: their key travels with the file, so the flag asks editors not to edit rather than keeping a secret. Install syhwp[fast] (or have cryptography present) to decrypt them ~90× faster than the bundled pure-Python AES.
• Merged table cells are captured in the model (row_span / col_span), but Markdown output leaves the covered cells blank (Markdown cannot merge cells).
• HWP 3.x and earlier (a different, pre-5.0 format) are not supported.

Why another HWP library?

If you searched for a pyhwp alternative, an AGPL-free HWP parser, or a way to read .hwp files without a Java or Rust toolchain — that's the gap syhwp fills. The existing Python options each have a blocker for commercial or SaaS use:

syhwp aims to be the permissively-licensed, maintained, pure-Python option, and adds HWPX support plus Markdown / HTML output.

How it works

syhwp is a clean-room implementation written from HANCOM's publicly published HWP 5.0 binary format and OWPML (HWPX) specifications. It does not derive from or incorporate the AGPL-licensed pyhwp, which is what allows the permissive MIT license. See DESIGN.md for the record/element layout and parsing details.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md. A dev tool, python scripts/inspect_hwp.py <file>, dumps a document's internal structure to help add support for new records or elements.

License

MIT © 2026 sysphere