coonverting text to tex

Giorgos Keramidas keramida at ceid.upatras.gr
Mon Oct 15 19:08:13 PDT 2007


On 2007-10-15 09:49, "Aryeh M. Friedman" <aryeh.friedman at gmail.com> wrote:
> Are there any utils that will convert plain text to TeX?

It depends on how much you can "compromise" about the quality and
typesetting beauty of the output.

A naive approach would be something like:

    \documentclass{article}
    \begin{document}
    \begin{verbatim}

    insert your text file here

    \end{verbatim}
    \end{document}

But this may not result in a typeset document that is as aesthetically
pleasing and beautiful as one which has been formatted by carefully
picking the typesetting commands you can use.

As an example, try typesetting the two documents which are listed below,
and see which one you prefer:

    % --------------------------------------------------------------

    % document1.tex

    \documentclass{article}
    \begin{document}
    \begin{verbatim}

    Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy
    in its own way.

    Everything was in confusion in the Oblonskys' house.  The
    wife had discovered that the husband was carrying on an
    intrigue with a French girl, who had been a governess in
    their family, and she had announced to her husband that she
    could not go on living in the same house with him.  This
    position of affairs had now lasted three days, and not only
    the husband and wife themselves, but all the members of their
    family and household, were painfully conscious of it.  Every
    person in the house felt that there was no sense in their
    living together, and that the stray people brought together
    by chance in any inn had more in common with one another than
    they, the members of the family and household of the
    Oblonskys.  The wife did not leave her own room, the husband
    had not been at home for three days.  The children ran wild
    all over the house; the English governess quarreled with the
    housekeeper, and wrote to a friend asking her to look out for
    a new situation for her; the man-cook had walked off the day
    before just at dinner time; the kitchen-maid, and the
    coachman had given warning.

    \end{verbatim}
    \end{document}

    % --------------------------------------------------------------

    % document2.tex

    \documentclass{article}

    \usepackage{palatino}

    \title{Anna Karenina}
    \author{Leo Tolstoy}
    \date{18xx}

    \begin{document}
    \maketitle

    Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy
    in its own way.

    Everything was in confusion in the Oblonskys' house.  The
    wife had discovered that the husband was carrying on an
    intrigue with a French girl, who had been a governess in
    their family, and she had announced to her husband that she
    could not go on living in the same house with him.  This
    position of affairs had now lasted three days, and not only
    the husband and wife themselves, but all the members of their
    family and household, were painfully conscious of it.  Every
    person in the house felt that there was no sense in their
    living together, and that the stray people brought together
    by chance in any inn had more in common with one another than
    they, the members of the family and household of the
    Oblonskys.  The wife did not leave her own room, the husband
    had not been at home for three days.  The children ran wild
    all over the house; the English governess quarreled with the
    housekeeper, and wrote to a friend asking her to look out for
    a new situation for her; the man-cook had walked off the day
    before just at dinner time; the kitchen-maid, and the
    coachman had given warning.

    \end{document}

    % --------------------------------------------------------------

The second version includes more macros/commands which I manually
typed, but it probably looks better when typeset.

- Giorgos



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