[drupal-devel] Re: [drupal.org] LaTeX content

[puregin]

On 20 Apr 2005, at 8:47 PM, Matt Schwartz wrote:

> Djun,
>
> My goal is to eventually have drupal books exportable in a variety of
> formats, including LaTeX.  I haven't had time to look into the LaTeX
> exporting yet.  Since I want to literally output a book from generic
> drupal nodes I'm not sure how we'd handle mathematics.  I don't want to
> have to rely on a special input format (i.e. drupal filter).

      If I understand you,  your intention to store source as HTML, and
convert to your export formats on the fly.  Is this correct?

      I don't know what kind of applications you actually have in mind.
In my experience, though, if you want to produce a high quality printed 
book
that works as a book, you need to start with markup that supports print
intentions.

      This isn't a problem if you intend to take an existing Drupal book,
export it, and edit it heavily in the exported format.   Probably life 
will
be easier for the editor with this task if certain conventions can be
enforced on the source text, either explicitly by the book module or
implicitly through the cooperation of your contributors.

> So unfortunately I don't currently have any code that can help you.

      I'm interested in a slightly different problem, namely having 
nodes contain
LaTeX (to start with,  perhaps later also MathML and other sources.)  
There's a
certain amount of interest in using DocBook XML as a native format for 
Drupal
Documentation,  so perhaps there will be some overlap with this project,
if it gets off of the ground.

     The LaTeX input would then be transformed into various output 
formats
including HTML, which would  be put back into a Drupal 'proxy' node for
the source.  This gives a kind of 'WYSIWYG' arrangement.   A bit kludgy,
but hopefully good enough.


> What are your thoughts on how it might work?  How would you like 
> authors
> to input their mathematical content into drupal?

     I think that there's a number of projects which attempt to convert 
HTML
to LaTeX.   I've not looked closely at these - search for html2tex and 
you'll
be on your way.

    Unfortunately, this transformation is basically 'just guessing'.   
Still,
it's probably a good way to start.  'Better than nothing!' .  And 
certainly
an interesting problem/process.   I've been doing some work
trying to go directly from HTML to PDF, and this might be a way to
achieve more control, so I'm keen to look into it further.

   Regarding mathematical input, TeX/LaTeX is pretty standard among
people with serious mathematics editing / publishing requirements.'
MathML is intended for machine generation/transformation.   It's
way too painful to type much of this.   However, there's some tools
for MathML to TeX/LaTeX, so supporting some kind of import
is probably a good idea.  This would allow people to edit in a
convenient GUI on their desktop, and upload to Drupal via MathML.


>
> - Matt
>
> puregin at puregin.org wrote:
>> Salve Veridicus,
>>
>> How is your work on LaTeX content management coming along?  What are 
>> your
>> envisioned use cases?  Do you have a prototype or demo page?
>> I'm interested in community authorship of mathematics.  I'd like to 
>> have
>> TeX/LaTeX content with full versioning, merging and diffs, chapters 
>> and
>> section structures handled via Drupal books.
>>
>> Looking forward to hearing from you...
>>
>> Djun
>>
--
Djun M. Kim, Director                           
djun.kim at cielosystems.com
Cielo Systems Inc.                              
http://www.cielosystems.com
Strategic Software Research                     Tel:   (604) 739-3941
302 - 1298 10th Avenue West                     FAX:   (604) 739-3943
Vancouver, BC, V6H 1J4                          Mobile:(778) 895-1379