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From: jaap@mtxinu.COM (Jaap Akkerhuis)
Newsgroups: comp.text,comp.text.tex
Subject: Re: MS-Word <--> (La)Tex???
Keywords: MS-Word, LaTex, Document Translation
Message-ID: <1991Feb13.203414.26176@mtxinu.COM>
Date: 13 Feb 91 20:34:14 GMT
References: <37343@netnews.upenn.edu> <6787@dnlunx.pttrnl.nl>
Reply-To: jaap@mtxinu.UUCP (Jaap Akkerhuis)
Organization: mt Xinu, Berkeley
Lines: 38

In article <6787@dnlunx.pttrnl.nl> stan@dnlunx.pttrnl.nl (Stan van de Burgt) writes:
 > matsuda@linc.cis.upenn.edu (Kenjiro Matsuda) writes:
 > 
 > >Hi, sorry for cross-posting this lazy novice question.  Does anyone know any
 > >programs that can convert the MS-Wordly formatted files to LaTex format ones
 > >automatically and vice versa, maybe on Mac?
 > 
 > I've seen this question before on the mac groups and on this group. Up to now
 > I've seen no answer. I'd like to know more about this question. Are you looking
 > for such a utility just for printing purposes, i.e. should the output of La(TeX)
 > just resemble the word output as good as possible? Or should the LaTeX source
 > should be as well-structured and readable as possible? The latter is not as 
 > trivial as you might think! Also, how should things like pictures, tables, 
 > formulas, etc be processed?
 > 

There is going to be an obvious plug at the end of this message, but yes,
I've seen the same type questions before and also wondered whether the
various requesters actually realized where they getting into. The whole
problem of translation documents from one format to another is not
trivial. And as Stan points out, the question what needs to be
translated for which purpose and how to deal with non-textual matter
is important.

A discussion of the basic problems and a description of our experience
with interchanging processable documents can be found in our book:

	Multi-media Doument Translation, 
	ODA and the EXPRESS Project
	Johanthan Rosenberg, Mark Sherman, Ann Marks, ...
	Springer-Verlag, New York, ISBN 0-387-97397-4
	Springer-Verlag, Berlin, ISBN 3-540-97397-4

Sorry for the plug, but since this question seems to pop up on a
regular base, I thought that people dealing with document interchange
might be interested in this book.

	jaap