Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!bloom-beacon!eru!hagbard!sunic!dkuug!iesd!iesd.auc.dk!fischer From: fischer@iesd.auc.dk (Lars P. Fischer) Newsgroups: comp.text.tex Subject: Re: ASCII output from LaTeX Message-ID: Date: 16 Jan 91 21:06:07 GMT References: <567@hydra.bucknell.edu> Sender: news@iesd.auc.dk (UseNet News) Organization: Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Aalborg Lines: 59 In-reply-to: droms@hydra.bucknell.edu's message of 11 Jan 91 22:24:59 GMT >>>>> On 11 Jan 91 22:24:59, droms@hydra.bucknell.edu (Ralph E. Droms) said: Ralph> I'm trying to duplicate the function of nroff - to produce nicely Ralph> formatted ASCII text from LaTeX input. I don't care if the output Ralph> duplicates the non-ASCII LaTeX output ... what I want is Ralph> nicely-formatted, machine-readable output from LaTeX. You should check out the TeXinfo format used for manuals in the GNU project. This format can be used with TeX to produce nicely formatted documents, and with an info formatter (either standalone or from within GNU Emacs) to produce ASCII version. Using TeXinfo, you can also create documents that can be used with the GNU equivalent of "man", the info system. Info is actually a static hypertext system. You design your documents as a hypertext structure, usually arranged as a tree (chapters, sections, etc) with cross references, an active index, etc, and then "compile" it into a text that can be read online. Such info documents are very well suited for online browsing and a much more functional that the standard man page system of UNIX. There is a special version of TeXinfo called LaTeXinfo. This has the same facilities as TeXinfo but works instead (surprise) with LaTeX. This is a great advantage if you are used to LaTeX already, as you will not have to learn a new way of creating chapters, say. These systems are, naturally, limited in their handling of such things as math. To be able to produce ASCII versions of your documents you should be careful with the constructs used in the (La)TeXinfo files. Ralph> The motivation for this work was a debate in the Internet community Ralph> about the proper format for RFCs. Traditionally, RFCs have Ralph> been submitted as ASCII text files. Some recent RFCs have been Ralph> submitted as PostScript files - much prettier, but not Ralph> machine-readable. I wanted to generate both PostScript and ASCII Ralph> from the same input file. Writing such documents in TeXinfo would be a *very* good idea. You would be able to create beautiful documents with TeX, create PostScript files for those without TeX (oh, boy...) and create ASCII versions of the documents. With a bit of work these ASCII documents could even be made in a form suitable for online browsing, which could certainly come in handy. Ralph> Anyway, I'm posting to the newsgroup to see if I'm reinventing Ralph> the wheel, and to get input as to whether the approach I've Ralph> employed is reasonable. Is there anything else available Ralph> I should look at? The system is currently usuable, but there are Ralph> still some details that could be tuned up a little better. Is Ralph> there general interest in pursuing this effort further? I wouldn't say that you are reinventing the wheel, but if you used TeXinfo you would be using a format that was already in widespread use. The chance of obtaining good tools supporting your work would be bigger, and your documents would be more useful to the world. /Lars -- Lars Fischer, fischer@iesd.auc.dk | Life is hard, and then you die. CS Dept., Univ. of Aalborg, DENMARK. | - The Immaterial