[texhax] TeX

[William Adams]

On Mar 6, 2008, at 5:40 AM, Thomas Brendel wrote:

> we have to print/reformat some old but voluminous software  
> documentation written in TeX. But we cannot find a suitable  
> LaTeX.exe  nor a 'converter' say to MS-Windows.
> We are running MS-Office and Win XP on a WINTEL systems.
> Could you give us  a hint how to overcome this problem?


While there are (La)TeX -> Word .doc/.rtf conversion tools, I'd agree  
w/ Alan and Axel that you _don't_ want to run them.

If the files are fairly standard LaTeX, probably the best route would  
be to install LyX (http://www.lyx.org) which on Windows will also get  
you MikTeX. LyX is a visual / interactive editor which in many ways is  
_much_ better than Word and almost certainly better suited and more  
stable for the task in question.

If the files aren't standard LaTeX, then the conversion tools won't  
work well and you'll need to achieve an understanding of how the  
macros &c. in them function and how to map them to similar functions  
in some other tool (I'd suggest FrameMaker instead of Word if you're  
desperate to stay w/ Windows and a fully commercial tool, but if  
you'll give up the desire for commercial support you'd be much happier  
w/ LyX, certainly the mapping of macros into a customized .layout file  
will be much cleaner and the output will much more easily match what  
you had before).

William

-- 
William Adams
senior graphic designer
Fry Communications