Converting DVI to Other Formats?

jgrr asks: "I'd like to be able to take a DVI file and convert it to some less palatable format, like MS Word. Some journals I want to submit papers to accept electronic copies as either MS Word or WordPerfect documents, not as TeX. (These are in ecology and zoology, not math journals). People I ask to look at papers don't use TeX either, and like to make the changes to the text itself, so PDF won't work. I know about latex2rtf, but I use some different packages and BiBTeX, and I'd rather not have to re-write the paper in Word after converting it. It seems like the DVI level is better than the TeX level for this, but I can't seem to find any existing software that does it. Any ideas?"

Comments

I had a similar problem

[b_pretender]

The best solution is PDF. LaTeX2html is okay if you can get away with html, and it handles equations the best of any (if converting to a GIF is best). 'tth' is nice, but again, only use it if html is acceptable. 'tth' changes equations into tables and symbol font, which is ideal for simple formulas but LaTeX2html is better for heavy complicated equations.

'ttm' will supposedly convert equations into MathML, but I doubt that the non-DVI/PDF/PS crowd will have anything on their computers to read MathML.

Everything that I ever converted to word/wordperfect, I had to rewrite the equations by hand. There is no other way about it.

Summary: If you are submitting a DVI file to a journal, and that journal requires MSWord, than you had better get a graduate student (they come cheap) to rewrite it in MSWord.

Ugh.

[pmz]

It is genuinely irresponsible for journals to require Word or WordPerfect files.

TeX and its many add-ons provide a truly great and open resource for scientists to record their findings. It is widely available, text based, and non-proprietary. For those scientists who can't figure out a text editor, there are GUI front-ends to TeX. If there is too much resistence to using TeX, then use one of the SGML applications (e.g. Docbook, HTML). Just don't use Word, for cripes sake!

Re:Ugh.

[jilles]

Mostly editing of journals and conference proceedings is either non profit work or work that is done with a limited budget. Outside of the math community Latex is not used very much (it never was, for obvious reasons of lack of user friendliness).

Editors generally need editable formats. PDF is not very editable (especially pdfs generated from dvis, get those a lot and hate them). Latex is editable but is pretty hard to convert (been there, done that, cost me way too much of my time). Word, like it or not (personally I don't) is a format that can be read on most platforms, including unix variants. Most third party provided wordprocessors have import/export functionality for word that goes way beyond import/export functionality for latex (mostly non existing). Probably the first thing a professional editor does is import the word files into a professional DTP package (at least that's what I would do). Having to deal with tex would be a pain in this case because of all the \, {, } and other latex thingies you need to manually locate and replace by the proper alternatives. (not to mention stuff like reference citations and dealing with eps files that are hard to edit)

I mostly write my own stuff in framemaker. If needed, I can convert to word pretty quickly and meet relevant formatting instructions. Converting from either one to latex is something I will try to avoid since it is generally quite hard and takes a lot of time. Journals that require latex are getting pretty rare in my area of research (Software Engineering) mostly because most researchers in that area use macs/pcs. In the case I encounter a journal that wants tex I simply deliver in word. If they want latex they can typeset it themselves, I have better things to do.

BTW. all those people using latex because of the formulas: Open office now includes a formula editor that can read/write mathml. Converters to and from mathml exist for latex so you can migrate pretty easily. The formula editor itself doesn't look to bad either. OpenOffice is free and can export to word better than anything I've seen before.

Is .doc really required?

[rubinson]

I'm in the same boat. As a grad student in sociology, I write all of my papers in LaTeX even though all of my colleagues use Word or WordPerfect. I haven't had any problems so my first question is "Is Word really required?" (Unlike the corporate world, academics tend to have a lot of freedom.)

For my colleagues, I distribute my papers as either PDF or hardcopy. Most people want to edit on a hardcopy version anyway, so they just print off the PDF. Could you just ask your colleagues to edit a hardcopy format? They might be willing to; especially if you explain to them why you don't use a word processor.

Regarding journals, sociology submission guidelines also ask for a "word processor" format (which I read as "Word" or "WordPerfect"). However, I haven't seen any journals that require electronic submission. Most journals require that you send them either 4 or 5 copies of the article or an electronic submission. I prefer to send a hard copy format because that's what's going to be redistributed to the reviewers. And regardless of what anyone says, appearance is important and LaTeX provides a very professional appearance.

If it really is necessary to provide a Word document to your colleagues and/or journals, I think that you're SOL with regard to TeX. Unless I've missed something, TeX, LaTeX, DVI, PS, and PDF can't degrade to a lesser format without losing some, most, or all of the formatting.

In this case, I'd recommend looking into DocBook. I haven't used it myself but, from all accounts, it produces publication quality text. And, if I recall correctly, it can generate TeX, LaTeX, HTML, and RTF. I don't know if RTF can support everything that you would need (for example, I don't know if it can handle images). If it can, great; if it can't, you could always import the document into OpenOffice and go from there.

Since I'm also in academia, I'd be interested in hearing what you decide to do. I'd appreciate it if you could post a response or shoot me an email.

Re:Dont accept TeX?

[Sycraft-fu]

If they dont accept TeX, then tell them to shut their magazine and stay shut....!

Um, no. When you are trying to get your research published, you can't afford to be a bigot. You are in no position to dictate to them what they must accept. They tell you "If you want to be printed in our journal, here is what you must do." This is life. In the academic community, having your work published in journals is very important. It's now you get it disseminated and how you get your name recognised. You take a poor attitude, like the one you espouse, with the journals, they just won't publish your work. It's that simple. A single, small, researcher is not enough to force any kind of changes on them.

In the real world, it's the big dogs that dictate the way things get done. In the case of the research community, that is often the journals. You play by their rules or you don't get to play.

Using LaTeX outside the scientific world

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Interesting you mention the issue of (La)TeX being used predominantly by the maths community. (I assume you really mean "scientific", rather that just maths.)

I think LaTeX, at least, is a very under-rated tool for non-scientific work. Even if you don't need the equations and such, it still has excellent support for document structure, citations and cross-references, importing external data and indexing, all significant improvements over the closest equivalents in most word processing packages. The only serious letdown is the table support, which is very powerful, but about as user friendly as a '60s mainframe.

My girlfriend typeset her whole Masters thesis in LaTeX, on my advice and with a little help to start with. She'd never used it before, but is reasonably smart and computer literate. It took her perhaps a day or two to get used to it, then it became second nature to her.

In addition to the basic features mentioned above, since the subject matter of the thesis was Indian literature, we designed a whole font for her to represent the Hindi quotations in their native script. Again, after I showed her the basics, she was quite happy designing her own character set essentially from the ground up using METAFONT.

OK, it's a fairly specialised subject matter, but LaTeX was just the right tool for the job. Using Word would have been a nightmare by comparison, and in contrast to the pre-historic software the rest of her department use to typeset Hindi text -- at a rate of about five seconds per character via a particularly nasty GUI -- its usability was fantastic...

I realise that you said LaTeX is not used "very much" outside the math community, but I would suggest that's as much through lack of awareness as "unfriendly user interface". Anyone who's writing papers is likely to be clever enough to pick up basic LaTeX pretty quickly, whatever their field. I've taught it to several people now, and I think every single one preferred it once they'd got past the first week's inevitable "how do I do <something simple>?" phase. And of course, given the plentiful support resources available (some excellent books, the comp.text.tex newsgroup, etc.) they can continue to use it now without any further help from me.

Re:Using LaTeX outside the scientific world

[E-prospero]

Most people outside the math community (including of course the other formula heavy communities like computer science, physics, etc.) use word or similarly feature rich word processors. Latex doesn't have these features, nor do adequate conversion tools for latex exist (i.e. tools that preserve structure, crossreferences, formatting and graphics).

Ironically, these "features" of word processors are the biggest hurdle to overcome in publishing. From the publishers perspective, the author should have NO control over the formatting etc or the article to be published.

For example, the IEEE accepts documents in almost any format, including Word, Wordperfect, LaTeX, and hardcopy. When a document is received for publication, the first step taken is to RETYPESET the ENTIRE document (for the record, in SGML). Any formatting information is summarily lost in the conversion process (which is performed by automated text stripping tools).

This display agnostic perspective is exactly what LaTeX promotes: the author has limited control (or should have, with a good style sheet) over the appearance of a document. The author should stick to what they are good at - writing up results.

I severely doubt there is a single serious publishing house that uses Word as their desktop publishing solution. If there is any preference for Word as a submission format, its probably because they have their automated tools already set up to strip text out of Word, and into whatever tools they use internally.

On a personal note: I had the experience of publishing a set of conference proceedings a few years back for a small student conference. From my experience, the single greatest obstacle in producing the proceedings was Word, and its "helpful" auto-typsetting. If I had my time over, the first thing I would have done would be to strip the text from documents, stick it into LaTeX, and write a good style sheet.

Russ %-)

Re:Dont accept TeX?

[t]

This is not insightful.

This is arguing that "my vote doesn't count".

Or that researchers should give all rights to their work to the publisher. Doesn't that ring a bell with anyone? To be clear, if you submit a paper to a journal, you can't even offer that paper for download on your own website! Yes that's right YOUR paper, YOUR research, can't be published on YOUR website.

For those of you who don't grok what I'm saying, go on and conform to whatever those "journals" request of you, but don't come crying to us when they require a butt-raping as part of the honor of getting your paper published.

t.