On Sunday 20 July 2008 06:50, Daniel Lohmann wrote: > On 20.07.2008, at 05:44, Steve Litt wrote: > > On Saturday 19 July 2008 19:57, Typhoon wrote: > >> <SNIP> > >> > >>> This is by far the best solution, in my opinion. > >>> > >>> Unfortunately for me, my only Windows machine is a 1997 Pentium > >>> II/300 with 128MB of RAM, which would be painfully slow. > >> > >> Steve, > >> What happens if you import the RTF file into OO and then follow the > >> procedures suggested? > > > > I don't know. I don't trust OO Writer as far as I can throw my > > house. OO > > Writer's not touching my book. > > > > About 2 years ago, during one of my occasional "I'm mad at LyX" > > months, I > > evaluated OO Writer as book writing software. What I would have lost > > in > > typeset quality, I hoped to gain in faster creation of styles. > > However, OO > > Writer kept changing styles all by itself. It was one of the most > > untrustworthy pieces of software I've ever seen. That gave me an > > incentive to > > learn a lot more about LyX style creation. > > Steve, > > Do not close this door to early. While I can understand very well that > you actually do not like OO Writer, I think you should give it another > try -- you do not have to really work with it. > > Even if all that Writer2LaTeX stuff does not work, OO Writer might be > a good transition format: > > (1) OO Writer preserves the structure of styles when importing from > Word (AFAIK). > (2) OO uses an XML-based document format (zips them on disk, but you > can just use a common unzip tool to get the actual content) > > The XLM-based representation is for sure a better source for script- > based / structure-preserving transformation than RTF.
Thanks Daniel, That's a good idea. If I weren't half way though the conversion I'd evaluate it. Unfortunately, OO Writer's XML structure is complex and difficult. There are something like 6 files, and if you tweak one it's likely you'll never get the thing to work with OO Writer again. Of course that doesn't preclude parsing its XML, but when XML is that touchy, it's all too easy to lose something. XML is getting really hip these days, but from my perspective, the huge number of interdependencies make it very hard to tweak. I know modern versions of LyX are XML native -- I hope LyX native format never becomes complex like OO. Thanks SteveT Steve Litt Recession Relief Package http://www.recession-relief.US
