doxx 0.1.4

Terminal document viewer for .docx files
Documentation

doxx 📄

.docx files in your terminal — no Microsoft Word required

CI Crates.io Downloads License: MIT Rust Easy Install Platform

A fast, terminal-native document viewer for Word files. View, search, and export .docx documents without leaving your command line.

Screenshots

🎬 Demo

✨ Features

  • Beautiful terminal rendering with formatting, tables, and lists
  • Equation support — LaTeX rendering for inline and display equations 📐
  • Fast search with highlighting 🔍
  • Smart tables with proper alignment and Unicode borders
  • Copy to clipboard — grab content directly from the terminal
  • Export formats — Markdown, CSV, JSON, plain text, ANSI-colored output
  • Terminal images for Kitty, iTerm2, WezTerm 🖼️
  • Color support — see Word document colors in your terminal

🚀 Installation

Package managers

Homebrew (macOS/Linux)

brew install doxx

Cargo (cross-platform)

cargo install doxx

Debian/Ubuntu

doxx is officially packaged for Debian as rust-doxx and is available in testing (forky).

sudo apt install doxx

Arch Linux

pacman -S doxx

The AUR package is also available for the development version:

yay -S doxx-git

Thanks to @mhegreberg for creating and maintaining the AUR package!

Nix (cross-platform)

nix profile install github:bgreenwell/doxx

Thanks to @bobberb for creating the Nix flake!

NetBSD

pkgin install doxx

Conda-Forge (cross-platform)

conda install doxx

or globally using Pixi:

pixi global install doxx

Scoop (Windows)

# Coming soon
scoop bucket add doxx https://github.com/bgreenwell/doxx-scoop
scoop install doxx

Pre-built binaries

Download from GitHub releases:

# macOS/Linux - automatic platform detection
curl -L https://github.com/bgreenwell/doxx/releases/latest/download/doxx-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m).tar.gz | tar xz
sudo mv doxx /usr/local/bin/

# Verify installation
doxx --version

Available platforms:

  • Linux: x86_64-unknown-linux-musl (statically linked)
  • macOS: x86_64-apple-darwin (Intel) and aarch64-apple-darwin (Apple Silicon)
  • Windows: x86_64-pc-windows-msvc

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/bgreenwell/doxx.git
cd doxx
cargo install --path .

# Or for development
cargo build --release

Requirements:

  • Rust 1.70+
  • System dependencies: libxcb (Linux only)

🎯 Usage

# View a document
doxx report.docx

# Search for content
doxx contract.docx --search "payment"

# Start with outline view
doxx document.docx --outline

# Export to different formats
doxx data.docx --export csv > data.csv
doxx report.docx --export markdown > report.md

# View with images (supported terminals)
doxx presentation.docx --images --export text

# Enable color rendering
doxx slides.docx --color

📋 Command Line Options

Basic options

doxx [OPTIONS] <FILE>
Option Description
<FILE> Input document file (.docx)
-h, --help Show help information
-V, --version Show version information

Viewing options

Option Description
-o, --outline Start with outline view for quick navigation
-p, --page <PAGE> Jump to specific page number on startup
-s, --search <TERM> Search and highlight term immediately
--force-ui Force interactive UI mode (bypass TTY detection)
--color Enable color support for text rendering

Export options

Option Values Description
--export <FORMAT> markdown, text, csv, json, ansi Export document instead of viewing

Export examples:

doxx report.docx --export markdown  # Convert to Markdown
doxx data.docx --export csv         # Extract tables as CSV (tables only!)
doxx document.docx --export text    # Plain text output
doxx structure.docx --export json   # Document metadata as JSON
doxx document.docx --export ansi    # ANSI-colored terminal output

📊 CSV export note: The CSV export extracts only tables from the document, ignoring all text content. Perfect for pulling structured data from business reports, research papers, or surveys for analysis in Excel, Python, or databases.

ANSI export options

Option Values Description
-w, --terminal-width <COLS> Number Set terminal width for formatting (default: $COLUMNS or 80)
--color-depth <DEPTH> auto, 1, 4, 8, 24 Control color rendering depth

ANSI export examples:

doxx document.docx --export ansi                     # Full color ANSI output
doxx document.docx --export ansi --color-depth 1     # Monochrome (no colors)
doxx document.docx --export ansi --color-depth 4     # 16 colors
doxx document.docx --export ansi --terminal-width 80 # Set terminal width
doxx report.docx --export ansi | less -R             # Pipe to less with color support

🌈 Color depth options:

  • auto - Auto-detect terminal capabilities
  • 1 - Monochrome (no colors, formatting only)
  • 4 - 16 colors (standard ANSI colors)
  • 8 - 256 colors (extended ANSI palette)
  • 24 - True color (16.7 million colors)

Image options

Option Description
--images Display images inline in terminal (auto-detect capabilities)
--extract-images <DIR> Extract images to specified directory
--image-width <COLS> Maximum image width in terminal columns (default: auto-detect)
--image-height <ROWS> Maximum image height in terminal rows (default: auto-detect)
--image-scale <SCALE> Image scaling factor (0.1 to 2.0, default: 1.0)

Image examples:

doxx presentation.docx --images                    # Show images inline
doxx document.docx --images --image-width 80       # Limit image width
doxx slides.docx --extract-images ./images/        # Save images to folder

⚠️ Image display notes:

  • --images currently works with --export text mode and shows placeholders in TUI
  • Supports iTerm2, Kitty, and WezTerm terminals

⌨️ Navigation

Key Action
↑/k Scroll up
↓/j Scroll down
o Toggle outline
s Search
c Copy to clipboard
h Help
q Quit

🔧 Why doxx?

Current terminal tools for Word documents:

  • docx2txt → Loses all formatting, mangled tables
  • pandoc → Complex chain, formatting lost
  • antiword → Only handles old .doc files

doxx gives you:

  • ✅ Rich formatting preserved (bold, italic, headers)
  • ✅ Professional table rendering with alignment
  • ✅ Equation support (inline and display LaTeX)
  • ✅ Interactive navigation and search
  • ✅ Multiple export formats for workflows
  • ✅ Terminal image display for modern terminals
  • ✅ Fast startup (50ms vs Word's 8+ seconds)

Perfect for developers, sysadmins, and anyone who prefers the terminal.

📊 Examples

Quick document analysis

# Get overview and search
doxx quarterly-report.docx
doxx --search "revenue"

# Extract tables for analysis
doxx financial-data.docx --export csv | python analyze.py

Copy workflows

# Review and copy sections
doxx meeting-notes.docx
# Press 'c' to copy current view to clipboard

# Copy search results
doxx specs.docx --search "requirements"
# Press F2 to copy results with context

Pipeline integration

# Extract text for processing
doxx notes.docx --export text | grep "action items"

# Get document structure
doxx report.docx --export json | jq '.metadata'

🏗️ Architecture

Built with Rust for performance:

🛠️ Development

# Build and test
cargo build --release
cargo test

# Run with sample document
cargo run -- tests/fixtures/minimal.docx

Known limitations

Equation positioning: Display equations may not appear at exact positions due to limitations in the underlying docx-rs parsing library. We've filed an upstream issue and are planning a complete fix for v0.2.0 using direct XML parsing.

Roadmap

  • Perfect equation positioning (v0.2.0)
  • Image support in TUI via ratatui-image crate
  • Enhanced table support (merged cells, complex layouts)
  • Performance improvements for large documents
  • Hyperlink navigation
  • Custom themes

💡 Inspiration

This project was inspired by Charm's Glow package — the beautiful terminal Markdown renderer that shows how terminal document viewing can be both powerful and elegant. Just as Glow brings rich Markdown rendering to your command line, doxx aims to do the same for Microsoft Word documents.

Thanks to the Charm team for the inspiration! ✨

📝 License

MIT License — see LICENSE file for details.

Made for developers who live in the terminal 🚀