Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!ncoast!allbery
From: allbery@NCoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery KB8JRR)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: Re: ASCII output from LaTeX
Message-ID: <1991Jan12.225355.28342@NCoast.ORG>
Date: 12 Jan 91 22:53:55 GMT
References: <567@hydra.bucknell.edu>
Reply-To: allbery@ncoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery KB8JRR)
Followup-To: comp.text.tex
Organization: North Coast Computer Resources (ncoast)
Lines: 31

As quoted from <567@hydra.bucknell.edu> by droms@hydra.bucknell.edu (Ralph E. Droms):
+---------------
| I've been working on the problem for a bit, and have generated
| a first cut at a solution.  The mechanism uses a new .sty file
| that uses only fixed-width fonts, and redefines many LaTeX
| commands to substitute fixed spacing for stretchable glue.  There are
| also made a few modifications to dvi2ps to generate better ASCII
| output from the .dvi file generated by the .sty file.
| 
| Anyway, I'm posting to the newsgroup to see if I'm reinventing
| the wheel, and to get input as to whether the approach I've
| employed is reasonable.  Is there anything else available
+---------------

You might look at dvi2tty and/or dvi2vdu, which convert dvi files to ASCII
representations.  With fixed-width fonts, it should be possible to coerce TeX
and LaTeX into producing output that will display with the proper spacing
using these programs, and dvi2tty at least can be run on a stream to generate
ASCII on the fly from a .dvi file, while allowing dvi?ps to be run on it to
produce printed Postscript output (or dvi2lj for LaserJet output, etc.).  I've
been playing with a macro package I wrote to generate Unix-format manpages
(note: this is NOT an nroff-to-TeX conversion package, just a set of macros
for TeX to produce Unix-format manpages) point will probably put together a
version for use with dvi2tty to produce nroff-like output.

++Brandon
-- 
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