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?"

Comments

Use your own!

[Ratso Baggins]

1. Print you document's TeX source code on rice paper.

2. Eat printed code.

3. Wait 12-24 hours.

4. Collect the word docs at "the other end".

Dear slashot..

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Keep using LaTeX

[mcelrath]

LaTeX, quite simply, is the world standard for scientific documents, and it should stay that way. You simply cannot enter complex mathematics in any word processor.

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