Re: ConTeXt to RTF Conversion

Re: ConTeXt to RTF Conversion

[Duncan Hothersall]

>    - xml in not an input format but (a well structured) interchange  
> format.

XML is a very good master format from which to derive all outputs. For
example, I receive wordprocessor files from academics and convert them
to XML by a combination of automated processes and hand-tagging. The XML
is then stored and maintained as the master version of that document,
and when we need to produce a new release in HTML, PDF or eBook, a new
style of PDF, a text version optimised for screen-readers, etc. we take
a snapshot of the latest XML and run it through batch production
processes - including ConTeXt for the typesetting side of things.

That might be overkill for small projects (we're currently holding 25
million words in XML), but the principle applies no matter what size of
content you have.

Duncan

Re: ConTeXt to RTF Conversion

[Maurice Diamantini]

Le 22 sept. 05 à 12:23, Duncan Hothersall a écrit :

>>    - xml in not an input format but (a well structured) interchange
>>      format.
>
> XML is a very good master format from which to derive all outputs. For
> example, I receive wordprocessor files from academics and convert them
> to XML by a combination of automated processes and hand-tagging.  
> The XML
> is then stored and maintained as the master version of that document,
> and when we need to produce a new release in HTML, PDF or eBook, a new
> style of PDF, a text version optimised for screen-readers, etc. we  
> take
> a snapshot of the latest XML and run it through batch production
> processes - including ConTeXt for the typesetting side of things.

So if I understand wml,  I agree that xml is a format for filtering,
not a human writable format.
TeX, LaTeX or conTeXt is in input langage, which should be able to
be converted to the powerfull master XML format.

So we need something to convert ConTeXt to XML more than something.
I suppose this imply easy convertion to HTML too !

So my question was, is there any exeprience about the use of
the ConTeXt module "m-tex4ht"?

> That might be overkill for small projects (we're currently holding 25
> million words in XML), but the principle applies no matter what  
> size of
> content you have.

-- Maurice

Re: ConTeXt to RTF Conversion

[Christopher Creutzig]

Maurice Diamantini wrote:
> So if I understand wml,  I agree that xml is a format for filtering,
> not a human writable format.
> TeX, LaTeX or conTeXt is in input langage, which should be able to
> be converted to the powerfull master XML format.

 No, sorry.  This only works for extremely simple TeX code.  forget
about any real-world mathematics.  Forget about 80% of what real-world
LaTeX users type into their computers.  TeX has simply never been
written to be easily parsed.  Besides, our actual users are way too much
concerned with what their stuff looks like on their screens with their
settings to bother about structured information and the like.  Believe
me, I have almost finished the translation of our highly structured
program documentation files to some DocBook-based XML format, and I am
very happy that I had decided to make this a one-time conversion with
the automated process only trying to get some 95% or so correct.  My
experience with the new format (which is still limited, I've been
working with it the last four months or so) leads me to believe that it
is no more difficult to use than some TeX dialect.  The only slightly
awkward thing is that you have to explicitly mark all paragraphs.  I
don't mind, but if you do, that sort of thing can be scripted.

 Short summary: Define an xml format that embeds what you need at the
moment.  One mistake I made: I didn't go for short names, but used
DocBook names.  I probably should have started from XHTML, using <p>,
<em>, <a> etc.  Then use that format as your master and edit in this
format.  There are magnitudes more decent editors to help you with
editing all sorts of xml than you will ever find for any TeX variant.
(I know, one is sufficient, but finding one that does exactly what *you*
want is much easier with more editors to choose from.)

> So my question was, is there any exeprience about the use of
> the ConTeXt module "m-tex4ht"?

 I do have experience with using tex4ht in LaTeX, which is its native
setting.  It is definitely much better than all the alternatives I
tried, but it does have problems with formulas, it is rather difficult
to teach it your new local commands and the generated HTML code is
usable for exactly one thing: Rendering in a graphical browser, for us
lucky ones without visual impairments.  I would not dream of using this
pile of mess for anything else.  HTML generated by Word simply can't be
worse.


regards,
	Christopher

Re: ConTeXt to RTF Conversion

[Idris Samawi Hamid]

Dear gang,

I have followed this discussion with interest. I edit a journal myself. 
Despite announcing loudly that it is TeX-friendly, the only person who 
writes articles in TeX for it is, you guessed it, myself.

I know next-to-nothing about xml, so I apologize if the next question is 
ignorant:

Would it be possible to define an xml format for the journal so that I 
could more easily process both ConTeXt/LaTeX articles as well as the docs 
and rtfs I generally receive? Is this more work than it's worth? It's a 
humanities journal, so little-to-no math.

Best
Idris

On Thu, 22 Sep 2005 22:54:47 +0200, Christopher Creutzig 
<christopher@creutzig.de> wrote:

>> So if I understand wml,  I agree that xml is a format for filtering,
>> not a human writable format.
>> TeX, LaTeX or conTeXt is in input langage, which should be able to
>> be converted to the powerfull master XML format.
>
>  No, sorry.  This only works for extremely simple TeX code.  forget
> about any real-world mathematics.  Forget about 80% of what real-world
> LaTeX users type into their computers.  TeX has simply never been
> written to be easily parsed.

-- 
Professor Idris Samawi Hamid
Department of Philosophy
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523

Re: ConTeXt to RTF Conversion

[Christopher Creutzig]

Idris Samawi Hamid wrote:
> Would it be possible to define an xml format for the journal so that I
> could more easily process both ConTeXt/LaTeX articles as well as the
> docs and rtfs I generally receive? Is this more work than it's worth?
> It's a humanities journal, so little-to-no math.

 Math is, in my experience, the worst part of it, so you an consider
yourself happy that you don't need it.

 The question is, what problems of the current process are you trying to
improve/solve with a possible move to xml?

 If your most pressing problem is the variety of data formats you
receive articles in, then no, xml won't help.  You'd still need some way
of transforming the articles to the format of your choice.  That being
said, XML may be a very good intermediate step from Word or rtf to
ConTeXt, if only because OpenOffice has pretty advanced import filters
and stores its data in a straightforward xml format that should be easy
to transform, assuming you start with a sufficiently rich set of
predefined formats and somehow get people to either use them (fat
chance, I know) or have them be sufficiently different that you can
automatically or at least semi-automatically classify the author's
formatting to your presets.  In really simple cases (e.g., pure prose)
you may get away with accepting HTML and converting that.

 If your most serious problem is a variety of output formats you want to
support (print/pdf, html, some eBook variants, ...), xml is a perfect
technique to develop a solution.

 If getting lots of different encodings is a problem of yours, xml
solves that nicely as well.  But just for that, there are simpler and
less intrusive ways.


 Other things xml may solve well:

- archivability (although your ConTeXt files are probably no worse)

- reusability: Almost everything in a file following a well-designed
  xml format is local and you can simply copy a (complete) block of
  text + markup and insert it into another file.

- consistency, enforcing rules: While it is possible to enforce things
  like “every article must start with an abstract containing one to
  three paragraphs” in TeX, it is way easier in xml.

- all sorts of conversions, including shuffling around or extracting
  data of interest


 Things xml won't do any magic for:

- layout.  You'd need to write a conversion to ConTeXt or whatever.
  Depending on your needs, this can be anything from trivial (say,
  two hours) to almost undoable (although this would mean the xml
  format is particularly badly designed for your journal).


 Both lists are certainly incomplete.  I hope you will get other answers
as well.


regards,
	Christopher

RE: ConTeXt to RTF Conversion

[Idris Samawi Hamid]

Hi,

>===== Original Message From "Pr. Erich Fickel" <efickel@iglide.net> =====
>andrea valle wrote:
>> I've asked too, but it seems that that there are none to rtf.
>> This lack of conversion is a problem for me.
>
>Would it be possible for you to use any of the software that converts
>PDF to RTF? Write in Context. When you need RTF you convert the PDF to
>RTF instead of the TEX.

Only works for the most trivial of documents, and if you have lots of accents 
and diacritics u r up the creek-)

Best
Idris

============================
Professor Idris Samawi Hamid
Department of Philosophy
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523

ConTeXt to RTF Conversion

[Louis F.Springer]

What are the options for conversion from ConTeXt to other formats, if  
any? I'm particularly interested in rtf and/or html.

Lou

Re: ConTeXt to RTF Conversion

[andrea valle]

I've asked too, but it seems that that there are none to rtf.
This lack of conversion is a problem for me.
latex2rtf was very useful for me becasue in that way I was able to use 
always latex for my writings.
Now, I'm using only ConTeXt, but in case of a paper not for tex-based 
review, I will have to go back to TextEdit or M$word. And I'm not able 
to reuase directly what I wrote.
I was mumbling  about creating a simple converter by myself, but I am 
totally ignorant about rtf, and I am a context newby, so...

-a-


On 21 Sep 2005, at 17:12, Louis F.Springer wrote:

> What are the options for conversion from ConTeXt to other formats, if 
> any? I'm particularly interested in rtf and/or html.
>
> Lou
>
> _______________________________________________
> ntg-context mailing list
> ntg-context@ntg.nl
> http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context
>
>
Andrea Valle
Laboratorio multimediale "G. Quazza"
Facoltà di Scienze della Formazione
Università degli Studi di Torino
andrea.valle@unito.it

Re: ConTeXt to RTF Conversion

[Pr. Erich Fickel]

andrea valle wrote:
> I've asked too, but it seems that that there are none to rtf.
> This lack of conversion is a problem for me.

Would it be possible for you to use any of the software that converts 
PDF to RTF? Write in Context. When you need RTF you convert the PDF to 
RTF instead of the TEX.

-Erich Fickel
-- newbie to context and tex, reading TeXbook and Context manual


-- 
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.10.25/102 - Release Date: 9/14/2005

Re: ConTeXt to RTF Conversion

[andrea valle]

Thanks, I' ve never thought about that.
Does anyone know about a free pdf2rtf converter for macosx?

Best
-a-

On 21 Sep 2005, at 17:58, Pr. Erich Fickel wrote:

> andrea valle wrote:
>> I've asked too, but it seems that that there are none to rtf.
>> This lack of conversion is a problem for me.
>
> Would it be possible for you to use any of the software that converts 
> PDF to RTF? Write in Context. When you need RTF you convert the PDF to 
> RTF instead of the TEX.
>
> -Erich Fickel
> -- newbie to context and tex, reading TeXbook and Context manual
>
>
> -- 
> No virus found in this outgoing message.
> Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
> Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.10.25/102 - Release Date: 
> 9/14/2005
>
> _______________________________________________
> ntg-context mailing list
> ntg-context@ntg.nl
> http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context
>
>
Andrea Valle
Laboratorio multimediale "G. Quazza"
Facoltà di Scienze della Formazione
Università degli Studi di Torino
andrea.valle@unito.it

Re: ConTeXt to RTF Conversion

[Mojca Miklavec]

Louis F.Springer wrote:
> What are the options for conversion from ConTeXt to other formats, if  
> any? I'm particularly interested in rtf and/or html.

The main problem is: PDF is extremely complex format (and Hans tries to 
explore almost every single capability of it) and you can't grant a good 
conversion for obscure documents. You can't get html out of the box, but 
there are some options depending on what your documents look like, what 
effort are you ready to invest and what quality of HTML/RTF you expect.

(I can't imagine a tool which would satisfactory convert the ConTeXt 
manuals into HTML without manual intervention.)

1. The best quality can be achieved if you prepare all your stuff in XML 
and then write both a stylesheet for conversion into HTML and "a couple" 
of ConTeXt definitions to handle formating for output in PDF documents. 
I never did that (I consider it too complex and time consuming), but if 
you're ready to go that way and sacrifice some time, there are some 
people on the list who can help you.

2. exTeX is going to natively support HTML output. The question is when 
a stable version is going to appear and if ConTeXt will ever support it 
/ if they will support ConTeXt. (not a satisfactory answer yet)

3. latex2html, latex2word, tth - like

No, no such tool yet and I doubt that anyone is going to write it soon.

4. PDF -> HTML / PDF -> RTF conversion

Currently the best possibility if you have simple documents, you don't 
want to spend too much time on it and you don't mind too much about high 
quality of the produced HTML/RTF.

I often use pdftotext and then manually reformat everything (not for my 
own documents however), but I was impressed by the quality of what ABBYY 
PDF Transformer was able to do with sample documents that I saw (it 
converts a table in PDF into a table in Word, preserves images and page 
layout, ...).

About the accents that Idris mentioned: As long as the accented 
characters aren't faked, there is a way to get them out of PDF.

Mojca

Re: ConTeXt to RTF Conversion

[Adam Lindsay]

Mojca Miklavec said this at Wed, 21 Sep 2005 22:09:32 +0200:

>1. The best quality can be achieved if you prepare all your stuff in XML 
>and then write both a stylesheet for conversion into HTML and "a couple" 
>of ConTeXt definitions to handle formating for output in PDF documents. 
>I never did that (I consider it too complex and time consuming), but if 
>you're ready to go that way and sacrifice some time, there are some 
>people on the list who can help you.

very much agreed here. I'd personally advocate an intermediate XML
format (that matches your document needs), and transforming to Word-
friendly HTML or to a ConTeXt-friendly format.

For a taste of some XML workflows, see:
<http://pragma-ade.com/general/manuals/example.pdf> 
<http://pragma-ade.com/general/magazines/mag-0008.pdf>
and talk with the list!
-- 
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Adam T. Lindsay, Computing Dept.     atl@comp.lancs.ac.uk
 Lancaster University, InfoLab21        +44(0)1524/510.514
 Lancaster, LA1 4WA, UK             Fax:+44(0)1524/510.492
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-