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Converting TeX to Microsoft Word?
belmolis asks: "For many years I've done almost all of my writing in TeX. This has increasingly caused problems with publishing in journals. For a long time, many journals reset what you sent them, so they didn't care what program you used. More and more, I find, they do, and in most cases, what they want is MS Word. Is there any good way to convert TeX to Word?"
"I've seen some advertised. Some only work with LaTeX, which doesn't help. One claims to use a full-scale TeX interpreter, but my queries as to whether it can handle home-brew Metafont fonts, PIC graphics etc. have gone unanswered. These products also all seem to be plugins for MS Word. I don't use MS Windows or any other MS products, and hate WYSIWYG word processors (I hated Bravo before it was reincarnated as Word) so a Word plugin is not a great solution, even if it works.
Furthermore, I wonder what exactly these programs do. If they interpret the TeX and then generate very low level Word, that may result in a document that looks similar, but a journal editor probably won't be able to edit it the way he wants to. In some cases the editor can be persuaded to accept a camera-ready PDF, since it turns out that the publishers often want PDF and the reason the editor wants Word is so he can edit the text, but when the editor can't or won't budge, is there any alternative to reformatting the document entirely in Word or a clone?
The larger question this raises is, where are we going? Even if formats are open, translation is difficult if they are only commensurable at a very low level. Is the solution to write in something very abstract like DocBook? And if so, will the market go this way?"
Furthermore, I wonder what exactly these programs do. If they interpret the TeX and then generate very low level Word, that may result in a document that looks similar, but a journal editor probably won't be able to edit it the way he wants to. In some cases the editor can be persuaded to accept a camera-ready PDF, since it turns out that the publishers often want PDF and the reason the editor wants Word is so he can edit the text, but when the editor can't or won't budge, is there any alternative to reformatting the document entirely in Word or a clone?
The larger question this raises is, where are we going? Even if formats are open, translation is difficult if they are only commensurable at a very low level. Is the solution to write in something very abstract like DocBook? And if so, will the market go this way?"
The F/OSS LaTeX2rtf is probably your best bet. Coverts cross-references, eps pictures to jpeg, or png (pdflatex users will be happy to know rtf supports jpeg and png), equations to either an EQ field or to a bitmap picture, and does tables right. It isn't perfect, but it is good.
Most journals I've worked with accept TeX/LaTeX or PDF files, given that you use the journal's .sty file (which they supply). I've never seen a scientific journal which doesn't accepd LaTeX output. Some don't accept MS-Word.
If it's only a few journals, I guess no respectable researcher would submit to those, so just submit to better journals.
Make even shorter URLs - 8LN.org
2. Eat printed code.
3. Wait 12-24 hours.
4. Collect the word docs at "the other end".
--
"we live in a post-ideological world..." - Billy Bragg.
Write what? It's not that Word is a bad wysiwyg, it's that wysiwyg is bad per se. It's not a matter of taste. LaTeX is MUCH more productive, gives better result, and you concentrate on content, rather than fighting with Word about format details. Fighting, because Word keeps changing the breaks, formatting, and stuff.
I have a large application written Common Lisp. It makes heavy use of macros and is written in a functional paradigm. Also, it uses a sophisticated code-walker macro to optimize the code and convert it to CPS style, and includes a full Java JVM written in Lisp to ease training new hires, as well as a type inference engine. About 50% uses CLOS multimethods and "around" methods.
However, my new manager only knows Visual Basic on Windows 95. How can I translate? I'm pretty sure it's not a "1-to-1" port. For instance, how do I do continuations in VB? Thanks!
If your journal is telling you that they won't accept latex, tell them you won't submit your articles anymore, thank you very much.
In physics we have it good due to the existence of the arXiv, where we put our articles first. Therefore journals are already limited by the fact that your article is already published on the web, and they have to accept the consequences of that. e.g. they cannot have too draconian copyright terms. I know in many disciplines the situation with journals is much worse. But remember, journals are totally dependent on us, the scientists, and not the other way around. With the advent of the web and email we can diseminate our work to our colleagues and perform peer review all without the intervention of a journal.
The physics community accepts latex as the standard, and people are (rightfully) suspicious of articles which appear on the arxiv in only .doc or .pdf format.
So, I suggest you keep using latex, investigate adding a section to the arxiv for your specialty, and tell your journal that they will accept latex or be replaced.
-- Bob
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
Compromise a little, use LaTex. :-)
You can probably live with the crushing limitations relative to using TeX
And, if there's no other way then use MS Word, its character building (bad pun intended). I'd say that it won't kill you but if you have a lot of equations it might. After about 15 pages of equation intensive stuff you end up using the find function instead of scrolling because it gets so bogged down. It also regularly decides that your equation laden document won't fit on the XX or so gigbytes of free space on your harddrive. It has a long standing bug that causes it to miscalculate the size of some formulas so that no matter how much space you have left on your drive it won't save your document until you remove the offending equation segment. Hilarious, I know. I'd send a document with the problem in it to MS so that they could see the bug but then I can't save the document to send it to them. Chuckle chuckle. Those funny guys at MS have such a great sense of humor. They're worth every hundred dollar bill I send them for their fine products (sarcasm intended). What's really over the top is that people look me straight in the eye and tell me that they never have a problem using Word. Since all my friends are completely honest about anything regarding their computer use (oh dear, more sarcasm, must be past my bedtime) you can probably safely ignore my ranting.
I've started using Publicon by WRI. Interesting product. A little bit beta. If you feel like just saying f&$k the editors then this is something that you might like to dink around with even though you say you don't like WYSIWYG. Given your other proclivities I'd suggest taking Publicon for a spin around a document or two. It also claims to export TeX or LaTeX or both and it uses a bibliography database and a bunch of other nice stuff. It has a Mathematica front end so its a nice outlining tool too. The cell thing takes a little getting used to but I've come to really like it.
Unfortunately, most of the converters will do only a subset of the markup languages & so few (if any) will work well with custom macros.
The Chikrii TeX2Word MIGHT do it. TeX4ht may also be worth a try (->HTML/XML, which can easily become other formats). Can't comment on TeXPort. Those are really your only options. If worse-comes-to-worse, you can also look fo ps/pdf->word solutions, but those are just as bad as (La)TeX->Word.
The first key to productivity is that you are comfortable in the environment. Additional keys are that it is expressive & doesn't force you through tedium & allows you to script away as much tedium as possible. Certain people ARE more comfortable with LaTeX & know it well enough (and use the right tools) such that it isn't tedious. The most tedious parts about LaTeX are not knowing how to do something (which is combatted by knowledge or good tools or good code to steal) and compilation errors (which is combatted by knowing the syntax well, by using editors that prevent/fix/point out errors, and by compiling frequently (sometimes in the background)). LaTeX is CERTAINLY more scriptable than Word & automating references & formatting can be quite trivial. An example I recently used was a solution to placing a series of dozens of figures & captions. It is easy to generate the plain text code to do this. Less easy to write a VBA script in Word. LaTeX is also more reusable & versioning CAN be better. In short, people CAN BE PRODUCTIVE in LaTeX
Products with shallow learning curves have simple interfaces. It is true that Word has an easier-to-understand GUI than many of the LaTeX GUIs. More importantly, it is (whether we like it or not) omnipresent & most administrative assistants already have some experience with (or at least knowledge of) it. Shallow learning curves do mean increased productivity for the novice. They don't translate to increased productivity for ALL users or ALL applications.