wps2md 0.3.0

Parse legacy WPS Writer (.wps) and Word 97-2003 (.doc) OLE2 binary files into structured text and Markdown.

wps2md

A tiny Python library and CLI for converting legacy WPS Writer .wps and Word 97-2003 .doc files (OLE2 Word-binary format, FIB magic 0xA5EC/0xA5DC) into structured text and Markdown.

Unlike .docx (which is OOXML/zip and can be read by python-docx), .wps files saved by WPS Office are binary OLE2 compound documents. This library reads the WordDocument stream, validates the FIB, recovers paragraph style indices (istd) via PlcfBtePapx → FKPs, and renders Heading 1-9 styles as #..######### in Markdown.

Install

pip install wps2md

CLI

wps2md example.wps                 # print Markdown to stdout
wps2md example.wps > example.md
wps2md example.doc                 # .doc files also supported
python -m wps2md example.wps       # equivalent

Library

from wps2md import parse, to_markdown

doc = parse("example.wps")             # path (str or pathlib.Path)
# or pass raw bytes (e.g. from an upload, S3, zip member, etc.)
# doc = parse(open("example.wps", "rb").read())
print(doc.main_text)                # plain text of the main body
print(doc.num_pages)                # from OLE SummaryInformation
print(to_markdown(doc.paragraphs))  # Markdown with H1-H9 from Word styles

for p in doc.paragraphs:
    print(p.heading_level, p.text)  # 0 for normal text, 1-9 for headings

API

• parse(source) -> WpsDocument — parse a .wps/.doc file from a path (str or pathlib.Path) or from raw bytes.
• WpsDocument — dataclass with main_text, paragraphs, footnotes, headers_footers, annotations, encoding, num_pages.
• Paragraph(istd: int, text: str) — one paragraph; heading_level returns 1-9 for built-in Heading styles, else 0.
• to_markdown(paragraphs) -> str — render paragraphs as Markdown.
• WpsParseError — raised for unsupported extensions, encrypted files, or unreadable streams.

Limitations

• Tables, images, footnotes/headers paragraph styles, complex fields, and CHPX (character formatting like bold/italic) are not currently surfaced — only paragraph-level Heading styles drive Markdown output.
• Encrypted/password-protected files are rejected.
• Only the OLE2 Word-binary variant of .wps is supported (modern WPS Office still writes this for .wps; the OOXML .docx variant should be read with python-docx instead).

License

MIT