LaTeX to MIF/MML

[Frank Stearns]

(oops; reposting; my email system plugged a spam warning into the 
subject line; might have gotten filtered downstream. If not, 
sorry for what would then appear to be a double post.)


On Mon, 14 Jan 2013, Steve Rickaby wrote:

> I quizzed the group about this back on '07, but the issue has come up again, 
> so it seemed worth fishing for fresh information. Has anyone been involved in 
> this type of conversion recently?
> 
> Previous discussions seems to center around needing deep TeX and programming 
> ability, neither of which I would have the time, patience or budget for.

In decades past I did all sorts of custom filters into MIF or MML (DEC RNO, 
Troff/Nroff, Scribe, TeX/LaTeX, et al). It can get very messy, very fast. Said 
another way, very expensive.

These days, cheap OCR is so good that I wonder if you might be time and money 
ahead to OCR the doc to RTF (having the process pick up what it can in terms of 
formatting), import the RTF to FM, then turn loose an intern to do clean up. (I 
only mention RTF because I know of no OCR
system that has MIF or MML as an output option.)

There's a tipping point in the page count between developing a full-on 
automatic converter versus a semi-automatic approach with manual clean up, 
which is what you'd have going the OCR route. This point will shift depending 
on doc complexity.

YMMV. Good luck with it. (If you need a tool to index the results, give us a 
call. <w> In fact, if the conversion left you with index entries scattered in 
the converted body text, one of the IXgen tools could help you get them into 
proper FM markers.)

Frank Stearns Associates | makers of IXgen(tm) for FrameMaker(r)
franks at fsatools.com <mailto:franks at fsatools.com>
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