Re: LuaMetaTEX as LaTeX to XHTML/ePub transpiler?

[Denis Maier via ntg-context <ntg-context@ntg.nl>]

You may want to have a look at the lwarp package as an alternative to tex4ht.

Denis

> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: ntg-context <ntg-context-bounces@ntg.nl> Im Auftrag von Hugh Fisher via
> ntg-context
> Gesendet: Freitag, 10. September 2021 13:14
> An: ntg-context@ntg.nl
> Cc: Hugh Fisher <hugo.fisher@gmail.com>
> Betreff: [NTG-context] LuaMetaTEX as LaTeX to XHTML/ePub transpiler?
> 
> I have documents in LaTeX, and would like to generate XHTML (ePub) output
> without going through an intermediate DVI or PDF step.
> Markup to markup, translating or transpiling rather than typesetting.
> 
> My use case is that I have two tabletop gaming books, 60 - 80 pages of text and
> diagrams, written for pdfLaTeX and now with XeLaTeX. I'm very happy with
> LaTeX and the wonderful PDF output for print.
> 
> But now I also want to create ePub/XHTML as well as print versions.
> So far I've tried tex4ebook and tex4ht and neither works for me.
> Firstly, some of the LaTeX commands are not recognised or causing errors.
> 
> And secondly, when I managed to get a small test section to work, the
> generated XHTML/HTML is very large, full of tiny <span>s. The problem seems
> to be that tex4ht runs TeX which typesets everything into DVI with every
> element carefully placed on a page, and then tex4ht tries to reverse that back
> into HTML. All this extra HTML will slow down / interfere with the ebook
> reader which is doing the final page layout at runtime on a particular device.
> 
> How I would like it to work is directly from LaTeX to HTML without any low
> level typesetting. If I have a LaTex source paragraph
> 
>     This is some text with \textbf{some parts} in bold.
> 
> The <whatever>TEX will copy the source text to the destination. If there's a TeX
> command, here \textbf, it looks for a Lua function with that name and invokes
> it with whatever argument text is present.
> The Lua function emits <b>, then recursively processes the argument text, then
> emits </b>. Similarly there would be an implied lookup of \beginParagraph and
> \endParagraph which would emit <p> and </p>.
> Plain text just gets copied through unchanged.
> 
> 
> So (finally) my question: is LuaMetaTEX what I'm looking for?
> 
> Yes is the answer I'm hoping for. And any guidance would be much
> appreciated.
> 
> No, but best starting point? I've never tried modifying TeX code itself, but I am
> an experienced and sometimes competent programmer.
> who has written a compiler parser and a high level code generator.
> 
> No and not a good idea to try?
> 
> Any other responses?
> 
> 
> --
> 
>         cheers,
>         Hugh Fisher
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