On Thu, Apr 18, 2002 at 01:55:54PM -0400, Stephen Pair wrote:
> Speaking of LaTeX/TeX...I have a question for those familiar with these
> tools:
> 
> A while back, I wanted to write some documentation, but I wanted that
> documentation to be available in a variety of formats, including HTML,
> PS, PDF, etc.  I looked at the linux documentation project and they seem
> to use a thing called DocBook, which appears to be an SGML (and XML)
> grammer for writing documents.

Ah, interesting question...as far as LaTeX is concerned, I grappled with
this myself.


> 
> My question is this: What is the best (and preferrably free) tool for
> doing such a thing (doesn't have to be DocBook, but I want to write once
> and generate the other formats that I need without worrying about
> formatting and such)?  The tool doesn't have to be pretty, but it would
> be nice if it could display the formatted document as it is being
> written. 
> 
> I tried playing with some tools, but there are lots of them and they all
> seemed to complex to grasp in a few minutes...so, I'm just seeking some
> guidance from anyone that knows in order to avoid wasting time learning
> tools that are not up to the task.


Well, you've got a couple options.  Personally, my 'target' formats are
usually HTML and PDF (Postscript, on an odd day).  Pdflatex does a wonderful
job of creating PDF from LaTeX files, and LATEX2HTML does quite a good job
of generating HTML output from LaTeX (including mathematical formulas).

The problem I ran into is interoperability.  I have no idea why, but LATEX2HTML
absolutely does NOT like pdflatex style.  However, LATEX2HTML does support
PDF internally on it's own.

The difference is that pdflatex is a lot simpler to use than LATEX2HTML..it
gets the job done and creates nice PDF docs.  LATEX2HTML's PDF support is
more complicated to use, and the end result isn't quite as nice...however,
you can generate both PDF and HTML.  In the end, if I absolutely need to
support both, I use LATEX2HTML.  If I just need PDF, I use pdflatex.

I've never tried SGML or DocBook stuff, myself...

> 
> Thanks,
> Stephen
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: squeak-dev-admin at lists.squeakfoundation.org 
> > [mailto:squeak-dev-admin at lists.squeakfoundation.org] On 
> > Behalf Of Hannes Hirzel
> > Sent: Thursday, April 18, 2002 12:18 PM
> > To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
> > Cc: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
> > Subject: Re: Who has no job? (was Re: O'Reilly Squeak book?)
> > 
> > 
> > Kevin Fisher <kgf at golden.net> wrote:
> > > Perhaps this is slightly OT, but speaking of publishers and 
> > formats... 
> > > does anyone know how publishers feel about LaTeX/TeX?  PDF?  Or do 
> > > they all expect Word format?
> > 
> > The large science books publishers like Addison Wesley, 
> > Prentice Hall etc. accept LaTeX/TeX.
> > 
> > HJH
> > 
> > 
> 
>