a script to output txt from the word/document.xml portion of a .docx file

.gitconfig

[diff "word"]
  binary = true
  textconv = docx-to-txt.rb -t

docx-to-txt.rb

#! /usr/bin/env ruby
# Simplistic DOCX to plain text converter, loosely based on the
# Simplistic OpenDocument Text (.odt) to plain text converter.
#  Author: Jason Rogers <https://github.com/jacaetevha>
#
# Assumes that you have the unzip and tidy commands available for your system

require 'optparse'
options = {}

optparse = OptionParser.new do|opts|
  opts.banner = "Usage: #{File.basename __FILE__} [options] file"

  options[:text_only] = false
  opts.on( '-t', '--text-only', 'Output less information' ) do
    options[:text_only] = true
  end

  opts.on( '-h', '--help', 'Display this screen' ) do
    puts opts
    exit
  end
end

optparse.parse!

if ARGV[0].nil?
  puts "No filename given!\n"
  puts "Usage: #{File.basename __FILE__} filename\n"
  exit 1;
end

unless File.exist?(ARGV[0])
  puts "File does not exist!\n"
  puts "Usage: #{File.basename __FILE__} filename\n"
  exit 1;
end

command  = "unzip -qq -p '#{ARGV[0]}' word/document.xml"
command += "  | tidy -utf8 -xml -w 255 -i -c -q -asxml" unless options[:text_only]
content = `#{command}`
if options[:text_only]
  content.gsub! /<[^>]+>/, ''                      # remove all XML tags
  content.gsub! /\n{2,}/, "\n\n"                   # remove multiple blank lines
  content.gsub! /\A\n+/, ''                        # remove leading blank lines
end
puts content

lame sauce.

lame comment, but thanks for trying

Very helpful, thanks! I made a small improvement to retain the paragraph structure of the docx document: https://gist.github.com/seba--/6294697.