This project is about developing some OpenDocumentFormat tools to help converting to TCVN 6909:2001 (Unicode) all files encoded with old Vietnamese encoding, say TCVN 5712:1993, VNI, VPS, and so on.

Detailed explanation of the problem of displaying non unicode vietnamese fonts

This page is more interesting in term of history since the hosting and the development of the project is hosted here :

https://launchpad.net/ovniconv

there's also an openoffice.org extension that exist also :

http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/ovniconv

• Mar.2008 :
  • Using a more evolved Python script, now we can convert font names as well!
  • Project available at https://launchpad.net/ovniconv/
  • Sources at http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~progfou/ovniconv/trunk/files
  • It's now version 1.0, ready to be used in command line mode! Debian/Ubuntu package to come anytime soon now!

• Apr.2008 :
  • Moved Python support for Vietnamese encodings into a separate project
  • Sources available at http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~progfou/python-vietnamese/trunk/files
  • Let's make it a proposal for default Python distribution!

• May.2008 :
  • Nguyẽn Đình Trung contribution to automate the conversion from DOC to ODT ⇒ see Batch convert Doc to ODT
  • Added a new tool to convert Vietnamese TCVN encoded fonts to Unicode ⇒ see the result (WARNING: EXPERIMENTAL)
  • Added a new option to ovniconv to keep Vietnamese fonts (but their Unicode flavor) when converting
  • Stéphane Masse contribution to get a graphical interface for ovniconv ⇒ see GUI for OvniConv

• Debian/Ubuntu packages available at https://launchpad.net/~progfou/+archive
• and also as Gutsy and Hardy contrib in the HanoiLUG apt repository

• open an old TCVN encoded MS-Office .DOC file using OOo:

ooffice test-tcvn.doc

• save the file in .ODT format, then quit OOo
• use unzip to extract the .ODT content.xml file

unzip test.odt content.xml

• recode content.xml from UTF-8 to WINDOWS-1252

iconv --from=UTF-8 --to=WINDOWS-1252 < content.xml > content-tcvn.xml

• recode content.xml from TCVN-5712 to UTF-8

iconv --from=TCVN-5712 --to=UTF-8 < content-tcvn.xml > content.xml

• use zip to put back content.xml in the .ODT file

zip test.odt content.xml

• open the .ODT file using OOo

ooffice test.odt

• It's all Unicode encoded! (but fonts are still declared as .vn* ones)
• Note that there still is some issue with some special characters (like double-quote) which are loosely replaced with Vietnamese accentuated characters. This is because we are doing a global raw string conversion, converting also strings using fonts other than .vn*. The final tool would have to take care of converting only those strings associated with some .vn* font.
• Test file used: test-tcvn.doc

About the HyphenationIssue