title: Conversion between docx / doc / rtf and lightweight markup
body: <p>I am looking for a tool or set of tools to convert between file formats D and M where</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>D is a format handled by MSWord, in order of preference, docx, doc, rtf</li>
  <li>M is a lightweight markup, such as markdown, textile, txt2tags, it can be an esoteric one</li>
  <li>there is a way to generate html from M</li>
  <li>conversion is two-way, it's done both from D to M, and from M to D</li>
  <li>utf-8 encoding is handled properly</li>
  <li>the content is simple, paragraphs, some simple formatting like bold and italics, maybe lists</li>
  <li>the tools are platform-independent</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>What I've found so far</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>TeX, LaTeX -- too heavyweight</li>
  <li><a href="http://docx2txt.sourceforge.net/" rel="noreferrer">docx2txt</a> -- too lightweight, it supports no formatting at all</li>
  <li>html -- MSWord produces bloated html</li>
  <li>a few one-way conversions, like <a href="http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension%3aWord2MediaWikiPlus" rel="noreferrer">doc to mediawiki</a>, </li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>UPDATE:</p>
  
  <p>The use case is a document workflow between technical and non-technical people</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>I, the technical guy edit a document in plain text, put it into version control, etc.</li>
  <li>I send it to my manager or other non-technical people</li>
  <li>They add comments, make changes to it using their Word, then they send it back to me</li>
  <li>I want to simply grok their changes, make my changes, put it into version control, without having to use Word</li>
  </ul>