Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!ucsd!helios.ee.lbl.gov!nosc!humu!uhccux!munnari.oz.au!basser!steve
From: steve@basser.oz (Stephen Russell)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.wanted
Subject: Re: LOOKING FOR WAYS TO TRANSLATE TEX, NROFF AND PC WORDPROCESSOR FILS
Summary: Use printer files as common interface
Message-ID: <2263@basser.oz>
Date: 24 Jun 89 13:00:55 GMT
References: <4522@tekgen.BV.TEK.COM>
Organization: Dept of Comp Sci, Uni of Sydney, Australia
Lines: 24

In article <4522@tekgen.BV.TEK.COM> robertj@tekgen.BV.TEK.COM (Robert Jaquiss) writes:
>
>     I am looking for translation programs.  Specifically  I
>want  to  translate PC type word processor files to nroff or
>tex.

A technique I've found useful is to use the PC WP to generate a print
file (ie, print to a file, not the printer) for a common printer such
as an FX-80. I choose the FX80 as adornments like underlining, bold and
italics, are indicated by simple escape sequences. This format is
relatively easy to translate into nroff (or tex?), although some more
smarts are needed to translate things like para breaks, headings, etc,
and remove unneeded page layout features like margins for the printer.

The advantage of this approach is the common interface - most (all?) WP
programs can generate FX80 printer codes. It's certainly much easier
than decoding yet another proprietary WP file format. Of course, things
like tables are harder to translate into their equivalent Tbl code.

If you're interested, I can post/mail a program I have here that does a
reasonable job of converting FX80 to ms macro troff source.  Apart from
the translation of escape sequences, it recognises patterns like new
paras in the input. This pattern matching is easy to modify for other
input styles.