[OS X TeX] how to convert .doc to .TEX?

[Alain Schremmer]

I have a similar problem, namely I am "converting" a whole book from MS 
Word to LaTeX.

Long time ago (on the LaTeX learning scale) I tried the MS Word —> rtf 
—> rtf2latex —> LaTeX route and, while it worked, the code it generated 
was too different from what I was writing for me to use—e.g. commands I 
hadn't learned yet, and therefore too difficult for me to debug. For 
instance, I had small tables which rtf2latex was turning into "floating" 
tables.

And so, I let it go and started to rewrite everything into LaTeX "by hand".

As a result of this post, though, I just tried the MSWord —> 
AbiWord—>Latex route. (By the way I could not open a MSWord file with 
AbiWord but could copy-paste from MsWord to AbiWord. Equations of course 
got lost but, I would think that's unavoidable.

I have the same impression as with rtf2latex: The code it generates is 
different from what I am used to. For instance, it uses systematically 
\textit while I use \emph (the "notoriously" fragile command but that's 
another story!).

But it just occurred to me that, now, instead of hoping to convert 
"globally" one file to another, I should try an intermediate, 
"piece-wise" route. What I will do is to:

 - cut up the AbiWord-generated LaTeX into "blocks",
 - try to learn how to use the OgreKit panel to "translate" these blocks 
into my version of LaTeX. (e.g. \textit —> \emph)
 - copy-paste these blocks one at a time into the LaTeX book—and typeset 
each time to find out the problems ASAP.

That should still be faster than the way I have gone so far and I would 
use the chapter/section structure that I already have in the LaTeX book 
rather than convert the structure from the MSWord book.

I will report in a couple of weeks on how this went.

Here are a couple of relevant things:

        http://www.abisource.com/mailinglists/abiword-user/02/Sep/0019.html
        http://www.abisource.com/mailinglists/abiword-dev/02/Oct/0309.html

I was intrigued by the latter but didn't look like something that would 
work on the Mac out of the box and I am quite incapable of tinkering 
with it.

Regards
--schremmer

P.S. At first, I had even considered buying a cheap wintel with Word2Tex.



Jens Adam wrote:

> Luc Feitknecht schrieb am 17.1.2005 21:32 Uhr:
>
>> Hi there,
>>
>> I have some MSWord documents which I would like to use from now on in 
>> LaTeX. Has anyone made good experience with that RTF2Latex converter 
>> dropled which seemed to work fine in MacOS 9 (classic)? Or is there 
>> any more recent tool helping me not having to re-enter these 
>> documennts for Latex?
>
>
> If you want to try a program with a GUI, try AbiWord 
> (http://www.abisource.com/) It opens *.doc (among others) and saves as 
> *.latex (among others)
>
> I used it succesfully for the conversion of some not to complicated 
> Word and WordPerfect documents recently. (This does not imply it 
> wouldn’t work with more complex docs, but I have no personal experience.)
>
> Jens
>
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>
--------------------- Info ---------------------
Mac-TeX Website: http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/
           & FAQ: http://latex.yauh.de/faq/
TeX FAQ: http://www.tex.ac.uk/faq
List Post: <mailto:MacOSX-TeX at email.esm.psu.edu>