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From: smg@eedsp.eedsp.gatech.edu (Stephen McGrath)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: Converting TeX/LaTeX to/from desktop publishing formats
Message-ID: <1371@eedsp.eedsp.gatech.edu>
Date: 2 Nov 90 23:02:52 GMT
Reply-To: smg@eedsp.gatech.edu (Stephen McGrath)
Organization: DSP Lab, School of Electrical Engineering, Ga. Tech, Atlanta, GA  30332
Lines: 35


We at the DSP Lab in the Georgia Institute of Technology are trying
to decide which direction to take for our future desktop publishing
needs. We have a heavy investment in and commitment to LaTeX, which 
has served us very well for the past five years. However, the commercial
desktop publishing / word processing packages which are emerging are
incorporating more and more of the features which we have been continually
struggling to accomodate within the LaTeX system, particularly WYSIWYG
(including equations and included graphics)
and an easy and consistent means of including graphics from various
sources in our documents. We would like to equip our secretaries with
new desktop publishing systems, but maintain compatibility with the 
existing LaTeX environment - most of the students and faculty with
machines at home will continue to use latex for document production.

An appealing solution would be a setup wherein we could use a new
publishing package (such as Ventura Publisher, FrameMaker, PageMaker,
Microsoft Word) or LaTeX as the need arose, with the ability to 
convert back and forth between the new document format and TeX/LaTeX.
If anyone has a setup similar to this, or knows of mechanisms to
convert between LaTeX and one of the above (or other) publishing system
formats, I would be very grateful for shared information, experiences, 
tips, warnings, etc. We have not yet settled on the publishing system
or platform (DOS PC or UNIX workstation), so experiences from either
of these environments or concerning any publishing system would be 
welcome, as would recommendations for publishing packages for
engineering/matematical documents.

Thank you.

-Stephen McGrath.

-- 
Stephen McGrath                        School of Electrical Engineering,
smg@eedsp.gatech.edu                   Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA 30332