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List:       lyx-users
Subject:    Re: Strategies for Writing Co-operation with Non-LyX Users?
From:       rgheck <rgheck () bobjweil ! com>
Date:       2009-02-05 16:12:44
Message-ID: 498B0FFC.6040504 () bobjweil ! com
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Guenter Milde wrote:
> On 2009-02-05, Abdelrazak Younes wrote:
>   
>> Guenter Milde wrote:
>>     
>>> In my view, to use LaTeX as exchange format,
>>> LyX development should 
>>>       
>
>   
>>> a) concentrate on an improved 
>>>       LyX -> LaTeX -> LyX 
>>>    cycle (with the aim to get this round-trip lossless) and 
>>>       
>
>   
>>> b) encourage development/improvement of LaTeX converters (to/from
>>>    OOffice, HTML, reStructuredText) that emphasise preserving the
>>>    semantic over visual appearance.
>>>       
>
>   
Anyone thinking of doing this kind of thing should probably look at 
plastex, which provides a sort of LaTeX parser written in Python. That 
would pretty easily give you one direction.

>> In my view LateX is too specialized and complicated for an interchange
>> format.  reStructuredText or any other simple markup language would be
>> just fine IMHO.
>>     
>
> But LaTeX is "feature complete", while reStructuredText is even missing
> math support (not to speak of paragraph alignment, tables,
> citations or a glossary).
>
>   
Yes, to me, that's a deal breaker as far as using ReST goes. And I don't 
really see that their development goals will ever lead to a situation 
where ReST is feature complete, in that sense. So my own view, for what 
it's worth, is that a greatly improved LaTeX<-->ODT converter is needed, 
one that "preserves semantics", or else a direct LyX<-->ODT converter is 
needed. There seem to be some existing python tools for reading and 
writing ODF, so those could perhaps be used.

rh

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