Evan Leibovitch wrote: > My last word here: Is there a tool to translate between .tex files and > ODF (or Docbook XML)?
Yes and no. The problem is that TeX is essentially Turing-compatible, so a fully general .tex-to-ODF converter is probably impossible (I'm assuming here that ODF does not support loops or conditionals; I have only a scant idea of the innards of ODF, so if anyone knows better I'd be happy to hear about it). Even disregarding this, parsing TeX documents is not a straightforward exercise. I've seen various programs that attempt to do this but currently there is no obvious piece of software that would do the trick. There has been considerable work in the area of translating TeX to HTML, and much of this effort could be (or is) reused for TeX-to-XML translation. The other way round is more straightforward. There is code in OpenOffice.org that will translate from word processing ODF to sort-of-LaTeX, and AFAIK that is now part of the stock distribution. Basically this amounts to translating the XML to something in LaTeX syntax, where one may have to come up with suitable definitions for (some of) the XML environments on the LaTeX side. It is also possible (if not exactly straightforward) to read XML files directly from TeX, so we may see ODF and LaTeX meeting in the middle at some point. Also, TeX is used as a backend by some XSL-FO processors (which of course ought to be able to handle ODF or Docbook XML), but if you find LaTeX unwieldy I would urge you to stay away from XSL-FO. In particular, not all of the XSL-FO-to-TeX translators generate output that one would consider readable TeX input, so TeX is used as a formatting engine but nothing else. (Think of the early C++ »compilers« generating C code as output.) Anselm (This is my personal opinion and not that of Linup Front GmbH.) -- Anselm Lingnau ... Linup Front GmbH ... Linux-, Open-Source- & Netz-Schulungen Linup Front GmbH, Postfach 100121, 64201 Darmstadt, Germany [EMAIL PROTECTED], +49(0)6151-9067-103, Fax -299, www.linupfront.de _______________________________________________ lpi-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://list.lpi.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lpi-discuss
