Dear all: As we work in Lyx to create our alternative books here in Goa, India, we often run into the headache of having to convert entire doc files into Lyx. This is a time-consuming and fraught-with-errors process, and a line-by-line manual method.
Recently, thanks to the very efficient Lyx-Users list [lyx-us...@lists.lyx.org] list, I learnt of some ways through which to convert doc files into Lyx. The formatting often works, and with a quick clean-up, it's possible to preserve formatting and import it straight into Lyx. This really saves a lot of time, energy and trouble. Let me share it with you here, while thanking Stefano for helping me convert some of my files! Jim Oldfield <jim_...@yahoo.co.uk>: One way would be to open the file in Word and from there save it as an HTML file. Then in LyX import that HTML file. I doubt the results would be very good, but they would probably at least preserve the italics. stefano franchi <stefano.fran...@gmail.com>: The conversion is never pretty, I am afraid. I usually follow this path: 1. in word (or equivalent) save from doc to rtf 2. convert rtf to latex with rtftolatex2e (in Linux and, I think, MacOs X. I do not know if a version for windows exists) 3. clean up the tex file in a text editor (in particular, remove all the \tab commands, take a close look at the font commads) 4. import the latex file into lyx Notice that most of the formatting is done via ad hoc latex command (i.e. changing the fonts, inserting spaces, etc), instead of using the proper Latex commands (i.e. title, chapter, emphasis, etc). That is how the rtf-to-latex converter works. If you want a "proper" Lyx file, you would have to clean up the file, by removing all the formatting instruction in ERT boxes (i.e. the boxes with \tab et similia), and by fixing the formatting with lyx formatting commands. For instance, the paragraph spacing should be uniform, etc. But the lyx file should get you going. Dr Eberhard W Lisse <e...@lisse.na>: I have had to do this a bit recently and find that the easiest way is to open the file in OpenOffice, and export it to LaTeX (you need an extension, google for it) using the ultra-clean option. Then I use TeXShop to get rid of some unnecessary stuff and change the header to what I like in LyX and then run tex2lyx. Works very nicely. It may work for you. Others have suggested the html route Frederick Noronha :: +91-9822122436 :: +91-832-2409490
