Subject: Re: LaTeX export bugs closed
From: Joaquín Cuenca Abela (cuenca@ie2.u-psud.fr)
Date: Fri Apr 07 2000 - 16:45:22 CDT
Paul Rohr wrote:
>
> At 11:20 PM 3/28/00 -0500, Pierre Abbat wrote:
> >Bugs 788 and 789, which I found while testing LaTeX export, and in which
> >control characters appeared in the LaTeX file, are now closed. Thanks to
> >Joaquín Cuenca Abela for fixing them and adding a few new features to the
> >exporter.
>
> Pierre,
>
> I just got a chance to look at the updated feature matrix, and was surprised
> to see how many red (unimplemented) and purple (untested) cells there still
> are in the LaTeX column:
>
> http://www.abisource.com/feature_matrix.html
>
> I'm not familiar enough with LaTeX's formatting capabilities to know how
> lossy a conversion is acceptable, but I figure you and Joaquin are. :-)
>
> Thus, for each remaining red cell, it might be helpful if you could confirm
> whether:
>
> - that property *should* be exported (it stays red as is) or
> - there's no LaTeX equivalent (it should be a grey n/a instead)
I think that LaTeX is a target a bit "special". Some properties, like
"colors" and "images" can not be exported to LaTeX, i.e. there are no
LaTeX source that can generate a DEVICE INDEPENDENT file with colors,
but if we suppose that the final LaTeX output will be postscript
(generated by dvips) then we can export colors and images (but the
images have to be converted to eps format).
Export some things, like the font family is impossible. Ok, note to the
LaTeXnicians... nearly impossible, if anybody wants to export the font
family, he has to find a method to transform a postscript font to a
METAFONT one... but maybe there is a method to use a postscript font if
we know that the output will be ps, but I cann't imagine a such method
(and I've read the TeXBook three times).
> The way I'm reading the current chart, I get the impression that there are a
> lot of properties which *do* have a LaTeX equivalent, but we don't properly
> handle yet. Is that correct?
"headers and footers" can be done in a trivial way (I need an abiword
doc with footers and/or headers, it's all).
"P PROPS" can be done in a trivial way, too (I just need to find my
LaTeX's book).
"colors" can be done, too, if we suppose that the user will transform
the dvi file into a postscript file (most of the time will be correct).
"images" can be done, but it's not a trivial work (the hard part will be
transform the png file into a postscript one).
"font family" cann't be done (can anybody correct me?).
But even with the actual subset, the LaTeX exporter is useful (at least
I think so).
-- Joaquín Cuenca Abela e-mail: cuenca@ie2.u-psud.fr
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