[luatex] XML export from Latex

[stefano franchi]

On Tue, Mar 11, 2014 at 11:05 AM, Michal Hoftich <michal.h21 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Stefano,
>
> yes I am relying on .4ht files provided by tex4ht, tex4ht.sty is
> loaded by lua4ht.sty in the case it wasn't loaded by calling script
> (like `make4ht -lun -m draft filename`). So this means that you still
> need to provide .4ht files in order to insert html tags.
>

Hi Michal,

thanks for your reply. This is actually very good news for me. I am
working with the LyX project within the context of GSOC 2014 to
provide a (LyX)/LaTeX export to (and possibly round-trip from)
Word/ODT XML formats. As many before me have realized, the only
practical solution is to go through tex4ht to have TeX iteself do the
processing and then process the results. However, we have found
several problems in tex4ht's  XML output that need to be fixed by
operating on the 4ht styles. So our first order of business is to get
those right.
Eventually, though, we would like to move beyond the current state of
tex4ht and move to Luatex, for the reasons you detail in your posting,
the fontspec issue, and so. It is very good news to hear that our
current work at the .4ht style level will not be lost in the mi-term
scenario.

> But because lua4ht has full access to nodes created by luatex, some
> interesting things are possible. I am exploring possibility of using
> `mlist_to_hlist` callback to convert math nodes to mathml, because
> mathml implementation in tex4ht depends on some tricks with dvi file
> and I don't know whether these tricks are possible to emulate in node
> callbacks. Other things which may be possible and which are not
> supported with tex4ht is support for vertical skips and rules.


This is something we are looking forward to. Hopefully by the end of
the summer we can start contributing to this project.

Best,

Stefano


-- 
__________________________________________________
Stefano Franchi
Associate Research Professor
Department of Hispanic Studies         Ph:   +1 (979) 845-2125
Texas A&M University                          Fax:  +1 (979) 845-6421
College Station, Texas, USA

stefano at tamu.edu
http://stefano.cleinias.org