Re: [NTG-context] ConTeXt to RTF Conversion
Dear gang, I have followed this discussion with interest. I edit a journal myself. Despite announcing loudly that it is TeX-friendly, the only person who writes articles in TeX for it is, you guessed it, myself. I know next-to-nothing about xml, so I apologize if the next question is ignorant: Would it be possible to define an xml format for the journal so that I could more easily process both ConTeXt/LaTeX articles as well as the docs and rtfs I generally receive? Is this more work than it's worth? It's a humanities journal, so little-to-no math. Best Idris On Thu, 22 Sep 2005 22:54:47 +0200, Christopher Creutzig [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So if I understand wml, I agree that xml is a format for filtering, not a human writable format. TeX, LaTeX or conTeXt is in input langage, which should be able to be converted to the powerfull master XML format. No, sorry. This only works for extremely simple TeX code. forget about any real-world mathematics. Forget about 80% of what real-world LaTeX users type into their computers. TeX has simply never been written to be easily parsed. -- Professor Idris Samawi Hamid Department of Philosophy Colorado State University Fort Collins, CO 80523 ___ ntg-context mailing list ntg-context@ntg.nl http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context
Re: [NTG-context] ConTeXt to RTF Conversion
Idris Samawi Hamid wrote: Would it be possible to define an xml format for the journal so that I could more easily process both ConTeXt/LaTeX articles as well as the docs and rtfs I generally receive? Is this more work than it's worth? It's a humanities journal, so little-to-no math. Math is, in my experience, the worst part of it, so you an consider yourself happy that you don't need it. The question is, what problems of the current process are you trying to improve/solve with a possible move to xml? If your most pressing problem is the variety of data formats you receive articles in, then no, xml won't help. You'd still need some way of transforming the articles to the format of your choice. That being said, XML may be a very good intermediate step from Word or rtf to ConTeXt, if only because OpenOffice has pretty advanced import filters and stores its data in a straightforward xml format that should be easy to transform, assuming you start with a sufficiently rich set of predefined formats and somehow get people to either use them (fat chance, I know) or have them be sufficiently different that you can automatically or at least semi-automatically classify the author's formatting to your presets. In really simple cases (e.g., pure prose) you may get away with accepting HTML and converting that. If your most serious problem is a variety of output formats you want to support (print/pdf, html, some eBook variants, ...), xml is a perfect technique to develop a solution. If getting lots of different encodings is a problem of yours, xml solves that nicely as well. But just for that, there are simpler and less intrusive ways. Other things xml may solve well: - archivability (although your ConTeXt files are probably no worse) - reusability: Almost everything in a file following a well-designed xml format is local and you can simply copy a (complete) block of text + markup and insert it into another file. - consistency, enforcing rules: While it is possible to enforce things like “every article must start with an abstract containing one to three paragraphs” in TeX, it is way easier in xml. - all sorts of conversions, including shuffling around or extracting data of interest Things xml won't do any magic for: - layout. You'd need to write a conversion to ConTeXt or whatever. Depending on your needs, this can be anything from trivial (say, two hours) to almost undoable (although this would mean the xml format is particularly badly designed for your journal). Both lists are certainly incomplete. I hope you will get other answers as well. regards, Christopher ___ ntg-context mailing list ntg-context@ntg.nl http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context
Re: [NTG-context] ConTeXt to RTF Conversion (tex4ht)
Le 21 sept. 05 à 17:12, Louis F.Springer a écrit :
What are the options for conversion from ConTeXt to other formats,
if any? I'm particularly interested in rtf and/or html.
I saw there is a module tex4ht usable for converting conTeXt to html.
http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Modules
http://source.contextgarden.net/tex/context/base/m-tex4ht.tex
Does anyboby have any experience to share on it?
I didn't find anything about it in the wiki.
About the other answer on this subject, my (dummy) point of view is
that :
- pdf in not an input format, but an output format,
(difficult to reuse for translating)
- xml in not an input format but (a well structured) interchange
format.
I don't want to enter xml version of:
We know that $E=mC^2$ and also that $\delta = \sqrt{b^2-4ac}$
But I'd like to export it (with table of content, index, ...)
in html or xhtml.
-- Maurice
P.S.
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Re: [NTG-context] ConTeXt to RTF Conversion
- xml in not an input format but (a well structured) interchange format. XML is a very good master format from which to derive all outputs. For example, I receive wordprocessor files from academics and convert them to XML by a combination of automated processes and hand-tagging. The XML is then stored and maintained as the master version of that document, and when we need to produce a new release in HTML, PDF or eBook, a new style of PDF, a text version optimised for screen-readers, etc. we take a snapshot of the latest XML and run it through batch production processes - including ConTeXt for the typesetting side of things. That might be overkill for small projects (we're currently holding 25 million words in XML), but the principle applies no matter what size of content you have. Duncan ___ ntg-context mailing list ntg-context@ntg.nl http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context
Re: [NTG-context] ConTeXt to RTF Conversion
Le 22 sept. 05 à 12:23, Duncan Hothersall a écrit : - xml in not an input format but (a well structured) interchange format. XML is a very good master format from which to derive all outputs. For example, I receive wordprocessor files from academics and convert them to XML by a combination of automated processes and hand-tagging. The XML is then stored and maintained as the master version of that document, and when we need to produce a new release in HTML, PDF or eBook, a new style of PDF, a text version optimised for screen-readers, etc. we take a snapshot of the latest XML and run it through batch production processes - including ConTeXt for the typesetting side of things. So if I understand wml, I agree that xml is a format for filtering, not a human writable format. TeX, LaTeX or conTeXt is in input langage, which should be able to be converted to the powerfull master XML format. So we need something to convert ConTeXt to XML more than something. I suppose this imply easy convertion to HTML too ! So my question was, is there any exeprience about the use of the ConTeXt module m-tex4ht? That might be overkill for small projects (we're currently holding 25 million words in XML), but the principle applies no matter what size of content you have. -- Maurice ___ ntg-context mailing list ntg-context@ntg.nl http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context
Re: [NTG-context] ConTeXt to RTF Conversion
Maurice Diamantini wrote: So if I understand wml, I agree that xml is a format for filtering, not a human writable format. TeX, LaTeX or conTeXt is in input langage, which should be able to be converted to the powerfull master XML format. No, sorry. This only works for extremely simple TeX code. forget about any real-world mathematics. Forget about 80% of what real-world LaTeX users type into their computers. TeX has simply never been written to be easily parsed. Besides, our actual users are way too much concerned with what their stuff looks like on their screens with their settings to bother about structured information and the like. Believe me, I have almost finished the translation of our highly structured program documentation files to some DocBook-based XML format, and I am very happy that I had decided to make this a one-time conversion with the automated process only trying to get some 95% or so correct. My experience with the new format (which is still limited, I've been working with it the last four months or so) leads me to believe that it is no more difficult to use than some TeX dialect. The only slightly awkward thing is that you have to explicitly mark all paragraphs. I don't mind, but if you do, that sort of thing can be scripted. Short summary: Define an xml format that embeds what you need at the moment. One mistake I made: I didn't go for short names, but used DocBook names. I probably should have started from XHTML, using p, em, a etc. Then use that format as your master and edit in this format. There are magnitudes more decent editors to help you with editing all sorts of xml than you will ever find for any TeX variant. (I know, one is sufficient, but finding one that does exactly what *you* want is much easier with more editors to choose from.) So my question was, is there any exeprience about the use of the ConTeXt module m-tex4ht? I do have experience with using tex4ht in LaTeX, which is its native setting. It is definitely much better than all the alternatives I tried, but it does have problems with formulas, it is rather difficult to teach it your new local commands and the generated HTML code is usable for exactly one thing: Rendering in a graphical browser, for us lucky ones without visual impairments. I would not dream of using this pile of mess for anything else. HTML generated by Word simply can't be worse. regards, Christopher ___ ntg-context mailing list ntg-context@ntg.nl http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context
[NTG-context] ConTeXt to RTF Conversion
What are the options for conversion from ConTeXt to other formats, if any? I'm particularly interested in rtf and/or html. Lou ___ ntg-context mailing list ntg-context@ntg.nl http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context
Re: [NTG-context] ConTeXt to RTF Conversion
andrea valle wrote: I've asked too, but it seems that that there are none to rtf. This lack of conversion is a problem for me. Would it be possible for you to use any of the software that converts PDF to RTF? Write in Context. When you need RTF you convert the PDF to RTF instead of the TEX. -Erich Fickel -- newbie to context and tex, reading TeXbook and Context manual -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.10.25/102 - Release Date: 9/14/2005 ___ ntg-context mailing list ntg-context@ntg.nl http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context
RE: [NTG-context] ConTeXt to RTF Conversion
Hi, = Original Message From Pr. Erich Fickel [EMAIL PROTECTED] = andrea valle wrote: I've asked too, but it seems that that there are none to rtf. This lack of conversion is a problem for me. Would it be possible for you to use any of the software that converts PDF to RTF? Write in Context. When you need RTF you convert the PDF to RTF instead of the TEX. Only works for the most trivial of documents, and if you have lots of accents and diacritics u r up the creek-) Best Idris Professor Idris Samawi Hamid Department of Philosophy Colorado State University Fort Collins, CO 80523 ___ ntg-context mailing list ntg-context@ntg.nl http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context
Re: [NTG-context] ConTeXt to RTF Conversion
Louis F.Springer wrote: What are the options for conversion from ConTeXt to other formats, if any? I'm particularly interested in rtf and/or html. The main problem is: PDF is extremely complex format (and Hans tries to explore almost every single capability of it) and you can't grant a good conversion for obscure documents. You can't get html out of the box, but there are some options depending on what your documents look like, what effort are you ready to invest and what quality of HTML/RTF you expect. (I can't imagine a tool which would satisfactory convert the ConTeXt manuals into HTML without manual intervention.) 1. The best quality can be achieved if you prepare all your stuff in XML and then write both a stylesheet for conversion into HTML and a couple of ConTeXt definitions to handle formating for output in PDF documents. I never did that (I consider it too complex and time consuming), but if you're ready to go that way and sacrifice some time, there are some people on the list who can help you. 2. exTeX is going to natively support HTML output. The question is when a stable version is going to appear and if ConTeXt will ever support it / if they will support ConTeXt. (not a satisfactory answer yet) 3. latex2html, latex2word, tth - like No, no such tool yet and I doubt that anyone is going to write it soon. 4. PDF - HTML / PDF - RTF conversion Currently the best possibility if you have simple documents, you don't want to spend too much time on it and you don't mind too much about high quality of the produced HTML/RTF. I often use pdftotext and then manually reformat everything (not for my own documents however), but I was impressed by the quality of what ABBYY PDF Transformer was able to do with sample documents that I saw (it converts a table in PDF into a table in Word, preserves images and page layout, ...). About the accents that Idris mentioned: As long as the accented characters aren't faked, there is a way to get them out of PDF. Mojca ___ ntg-context mailing list ntg-context@ntg.nl http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context
Re: [NTG-context] ConTeXt to RTF Conversion
Mojca Miklavec said this at Wed, 21 Sep 2005 22:09:32 +0200: 1. The best quality can be achieved if you prepare all your stuff in XML and then write both a stylesheet for conversion into HTML and a couple of ConTeXt definitions to handle formating for output in PDF documents. I never did that (I consider it too complex and time consuming), but if you're ready to go that way and sacrifice some time, there are some people on the list who can help you. very much agreed here. I'd personally advocate an intermediate XML format (that matches your document needs), and transforming to Word- friendly HTML or to a ConTeXt-friendly format. For a taste of some XML workflows, see: http://pragma-ade.com/general/manuals/example.pdf http://pragma-ade.com/general/magazines/mag-0008.pdf and talk with the list! -- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Adam T. Lindsay, Computing Dept. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Lancaster University, InfoLab21+44(0)1524/510.514 Lancaster, LA1 4WA, UK Fax:+44(0)1524/510.492 -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- ___ ntg-context mailing list ntg-context@ntg.nl http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context
Re: [NTG-context] ConTeXt to RTF Conversion
Thanks, I' ve never thought about that. Does anyone know about a free pdf2rtf converter for macosx? Best -a- On 21 Sep 2005, at 17:58, Pr. Erich Fickel wrote: andrea valle wrote: I've asked too, but it seems that that there are none to rtf. This lack of conversion is a problem for me. Would it be possible for you to use any of the software that converts PDF to RTF? Write in Context. When you need RTF you convert the PDF to RTF instead of the TEX. -Erich Fickel -- newbie to context and tex, reading TeXbook and Context manual -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.10.25/102 - Release Date: 9/14/2005 ___ ntg-context mailing list ntg-context@ntg.nl http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context Andrea Valle Laboratorio multimediale G. Quazza Facoltà di Scienze della Formazione Università degli Studi di Torino [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ ntg-context mailing list ntg-context@ntg.nl http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context
