In my opinion there is little reason to use shitty proprietary software like Word. If you're serious about getting the document properly typeset, use LaTeX. You can render the PDFs that pdflatex produces to HTML very, very well using this: https://coolwanglu.github.io/pdf2htmlEX/, which seems to be the best of that class of tools - the demos there are very impressive.
Alternatively if you're less concerned about getting precisely the same formatting everywhere and want an easier to learn format, I would suggest Pandoc over Markdown. Markdown is very inconsistently implemented, because the initial format was quite basic and so everyone seems to have extended it differently. Pandoc can also output to Markdown along with seemingly every other format in existence. LaTeX can be quite easy if you're doing simple things, though. It looks intimidating because often the examples given having big headers including a huge number of extensions to do things like draw natural deduction proofs and graphs, and writing out mathematics in LaTeX is quite verbose (but easy to read with vim-conceal, which visually replaces things like \phi with the unicode phi character on lines other than the one you are currently on). But when your document is mostly text with a bit of markup, LaTeX produces documents that are nice to look at, well typeset (with ligatures etc.) and not that much formatting noise. Google has several suggestions (mostly on the TeX/LaTeX stackexchange) for converting (La)TeX to .DOC if he still needs that format as well. Some directly, some through HTML, some through PDF. On Sun, Jul 24, 2016 at 5:40 PM Derek Smithies <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi, > > source document in latex > > and then use latex2html, latex2pdf, latex2dvi (and then to postscript > to print) > There is a latex2rtf > > The docbook project uses (I think) .xml which will transform into all > the required outputs. > > Along came things like pandoc (which is latex (or similar) underneath) > that claims to do generic conversion. > there are some markup languages which require formatting like > *some_text_in_italics* which will italicise on the one enclosing * > or with two stars gives you **bold text here** > > These formatting systems work fine for real simple documents. They have > column and table markup options also. > > All of these techniques claim to be 'easy'. There are a ton of linux gui > clients that claim to make it easy to do text in them. > > I am not convinced on the many claims. I would argue that a beginner > with latex (and google and some examples) will be fine > > for simple documents.. > > Worth pointing out is that latex is often used by physics students to do > their masters/phd thesis > > (does subscripts on subscripts nicely, handles chapters, references, > lots of figures, is text based) nicely. and backs up well. > > > True, word has improved a lot. > > Many emails have been sent debating the merits of latex vs word. Or, > markup language vs other markup language. I would argue > > that when you have a small number of figures, latex will do well for you. > > > > Cheers, > > Derek. > > > > On 24/07/16 17:00, Ross Drummond wrote: > > I have an acquaintance who who maintains some reference document in > > various forms. He produces identical documents in HTML PDF and DOC > > formats. > > > > He asked me, "You're an Linux user right? Can I generate the different > > formats from a single source using Linux?" > > > > I went, "Yeah probably." > > > > What is a more informative answer? The document is not too complicated, > > an index text and tables. A rich text file is an acceptable > > substitute for a DOC file. > > > > Cheers Ross Drummond > > _______________________________________________ > > Linux-users mailing list > > [email protected] > > http://lists.canterbury.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/linux-users > > -- > Sent from my Ubuntu 16.04 computer > > _______________________________________________ > Linux-users mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.canterbury.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/linux-users >
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