From: ijp@oak10.doc.ic.ac.uk (Ian Palmer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: impression->TEX
Date: 14 Aug 92 09:13:59 GMT
Reply-To: ijp@doc.ic.ac.uk
Organization: Department of Computing, Imperial College, University of London, UK.
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL3

t-piersh@microsoft.com (Piers Haken) writes:
: In article <1992Aug12.130140.2375@cs.nott.ac.uk> rsxdp@unicorn.nott.ac.uk (D.Pead) writes:
: >In article <1992Aug10.141557.8155@vax.oxford.ac.uk> cstevens@vax.oxford.ac.uk writes:
: >>	anyone out there know if CC's Impression can produce TEX output files?
: >>does anyone have a module that'll convert from one to the other. I've been told
: >
: >Impression "Document Description Format" looks a bit like this:
: >
: >{Lots and lots of format data}
: >Some plain text, with or with out linefeeds & returns as required
: >{"Italic" on}A bit of text in Italics{"Italic" off} and without
: >{"Wobbly" on}A bit of text in a user defined style{"Wobbly" off}
: >
: >etc.
: >
: >So you could probably write a utility to do the conversion (e.g. in
: >one of the UN*X-type PD tools such as SED or as a MICROEMACS Macro).
: >
: >ASCII input/output is a doddle.
: >
: >Impression has a mechanism for bolt-on import/export modules, but I don't
: >think anybody other than CC has produced any.
: 
: Alternatively you could write a set of latex macros that could
: interpret CC description documents directly, no?

Not directly (well as far as I can work out anyway) because all TeX
macros must start with a '\', and Impression DDF doesn't use that. But
writing a simple parser to change some of the simple things could take
a bit of the work out of converting from Impression to TeX, but a full
converter would (I would guess) be beyond the realms of possibility
(from what I've seen of Impression DDF). This is because although it's
a simple task to convert something like 

{"Italic" on} Hello There {"Italic" off}

to

{\it Hello There}

or

\begin{italic} Hello There \end{italic}

(or what ever, it's over a year since I've used TeX), I don't think
you'll be able to convert page layout information very easily (does
frame info get saved into a DDF file?) and graphics would be a
nightmare (TeX graphics always are :-) ).

Then of course there's the problem of font translation (unless you
only use the TeX fonts - but then you'd need to get over 1/3rd the TeX
distibution anyway, so you might as well go the full hog).

I think the basic problem is that Impression and TeX are just so
different from each other that converting between them is just too
difficult. It's almost as if, if you take the developemtns of each
(although for histoical reasons this is a load of rubbish, but it's
just an annalogy(ish) type situation) as starting from a simple word
processor, (direction wise) it would be something like :

  TeX <------------------ Word Processor --------> Impression II

(ie. going in completely different directions) and thus (I whould
imagine) converting from one to another would take more work than the
developement of either of them (if you see what I mean, it's not
totally clear I know).

But then again I could just be talking rubbish, I usually do :-)

Ian

: 
: Piers.
: -- 
: Disclaimer: These views are my own and not necessarily
:             those of the company for which I work.

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