LaTeX2rtf

LaTeX2RTF

This file documents LaTeX2RTF , a converter that translates LaTeX to RTF.

• History:
• Introduction:
• Availability:
• Installing LaTeX2RTF:
• Using LaTeX2RTF:
• Features:
• Configuring LaTeX2RTF :
• Error Messages and Logging :
• LaTeX2RTF under Development :
• Index for LaTeX2RTF :

History & Copyright

In 1994 the first Version of LaTeX2RTF was written by Fernando Dorner and Andreas Granzer of the Viena University supervised by Ralf Schlatterbeck in a one-semester course. They created a simple LaTeX parser and added most of the infrastructure for the program. This was version 1.0 of LaTeX2RTF . In 1995, work on LaTeX2RTF was continued in another one-semester course by Friedrich Polzer and Gerhard Trisko. The result was LaTeX2RTF version 1.5. Ralf Schlatterbeck maintained and extended LaTeX2RTF until 1998.

In 1998 Georg Lehner found the reference to LaTeX2RTF on the TeX Conversion Webpage of Wilfried Hennings and added some functionality and took over the maintainence of the program. The last version release by Georg is 1.8aa. The bulk of development post 1.8aa was done by Scott Prahl. Wilfried Hennings now coordinates the development of the program and maintains the project on SourceForge where there are also (low volume) mailing lists for users latex2rtf-users@lists.sourceforge.net and developers latex2rtf-developers@lists.sourceforge.net. For subscription to these lists: latex2rtf-users-request@lists.sourceforge.net?subject=subscribe or latex2rtf-developers-request@lists.sourceforge.net?subject=subscribe

As of April 2002, version 1.9.13 of LaTeX2RTF is available. One day there shall be a jump to Version 2.0, but this is not history but future ...

The contents of this manual were composed by copying shamelessly what was available in the original sources and documentation.

Introduction

LaTeX2RTF is a translator program from LaTeX text into "rich text format" files. These files are commonly referred to as RTF files. RTF is a published standard format by Microsoft. This standard can be ambiguous in places and Microsoft ignores parts of the standard it finds inconvenient, but RTF is widely used by many WYSIWIG text editors and is supported by Microsoft Word and most text processors.

LaTeX2RTF translates the text and as much of the formatting information from LaTeX to RTF. Be forewarned that the typeset output is not nearly as good as what you would get from using LaTeX directly. So, why bother translating? Consider,

1. You use LaTeX and hate everything beginning with MS-.... Nevertheless, you have to share your documents with people who don't even now that there exist other things than MS-....
2. You know somebody who frequently sends you very fine LaTeX documents. Unfortunately, you are "on the other side" and need to import her files, steal some part, and then desktop publish it in your fine MS-... environment.

There are drawbacks to the conversion process. In fact, don't expect any LaTeX file to be converted as you would like, don't expect it to be converted without errors or warnings, and don't be especially surprised when it doesn't convert at all. LaTeX2RTF is known to have many bugs and many missing features. Paradoxically, this number seems to grow more and more with each day. However, we can categorically state that there are some special cases, in which a LaTeX file will be translated to RTF satisfactorily by LaTeX2RTF -- This was sort of disclaimer, ok? OK!

LaTeX is a system for typesetting text and therefore it focuses on the logical structure of a document, whilst RTF is meant to be a transport format for a family of Desktop Publishing Software, dealing mostly with the design of a text.

Although the possible different commands and styles in LaTeX are much more flexible and standardized than in RTF, only a small subset of commands has been implemented to date. See Unimplemented Features.

Some of the capabilities of LaTeX2RTF are restricted in scope or buggy. See Known Bugs.

RTF is a moving target, because Microsoft does not stop inventing new extensions and features for it. So you cannot view newer RTF files with older word processors. LaTeX2RTF eventually will generate RTF output that is unreadable with your Program. The syntax and semantics of RTF are somewhat artistic, i.e., you can generate a syntactically correct RTF file that cannot be displayed by some/most word processors.

For more details on RTF look at the RTF-Tools by Paul DuBois, and the corresponding newsgroups, etc. http://www.primate.wisc.edu/

Availability

LaTeX2RTF is available for many Unix Platforms, for the Macintosh, and for MS-DOS, including all versions of MS Windows 95.

The MS-DOS version (1.8aa and up) will also run under all MS Windows versions. It requires an i386 processor or better. The Win32 Version requires Cygnus-Cygwin32. As the MS-DOS version (1.8aa and up) will also run under all MS windows versions, the Win32 version has been discontinued.

Subsequent to 1.8aa, Scott Prahl has fixed many bugs, improved handling of tabular environments, significantly improved handling of equations, added macro expansion, improved handling of cross references, added bitmap rendering of equations, and added some support for \includegraphics files.

You find the latest version on SourceForge and - with some delay - on CTAN sites: e.g., http://www.dante.de or http://www.ctan.org.

There are a couple of people working on the LaTeX2RTF , coordinated by Wilfried Hennings. Contact the mailing_list for the latest news.

Installing LaTeX2RTF

• General :
• UNIX :
• DOS or Windows :
• Macintosh :
• Problems Compiling :
• Problems with make check :

General

The documentation of the program is found in the doc/ directory in the file latex2rtf.texi in the GNU TeXInfo format. For your convenience, you can find HTML and PDF versions of the manual there as well.

UNIX

To install,

1. Edit Makefile for your local configuration. In particular, pay attention to the PREFIX variable. If you do not have root access you might wish to set the makefile variable PREFIX to be your home directory.
2. As of version 1.9.13, LaTeX2RTF supports conversion of LaTeX equations to bitmaps using the shell script latex2png, found in scripts/. latex2png requires that both LaTeX and ImageMagick are installed. LaTeX2RTF will translate documents without a working latex2png, but some features will be missing.
3. make

   If this is not your first time installation, you may want to preserve your old configuration (*.cfg) files. Copy them to a safe place before installing.

4. make check

   [OPTIONAL] This tests LaTeX2RTF on a variety of LaTeX files. Expect a whole lot of warnings, but no outright errors.

5. make install

   If your mkdir doesn't support the -p option, then create the necessary directories by hand and remove the option from the $MKDIR variable. If you have other problems, just copy latex2rtf and latex2png to a binary directory, and move the contents of the cfg/ directory to the location specified by $CFG_INSTALL.

6. make install-info

   [OPTIONAL] This installs .info files for use with the info program.

You no longer need to define the environment variable RTFPATH. This is only necessary if you move the directory containing the .cfg files. Just define RTFPATH to be the path to the new location.

DOS or Windows

The UNIX and Mac distributions do not contain an executable for DOS or Windows. Instead, get the DOS port as file latex2rtf-x.xx_dos.zip (where x.xx is the version number) from SourceForge

The DOS distribution contains a precompiled executable which should run under plain DOS and also under any MS Windows system.

To install latex2rtf, extract all files from the zip archive to C:\l2r or to another folder (i.e. directory) of your choice, preserving the folder structure (winzip: check "use folder names"). If you extracted them to another folder, edit the files L2R.BAT and L2RSEM.BAT and change the pathes to LATEX2RT.EXE and to the cfg files to the folder where you put them.

Make sure that the folder containing the files L2R.BAT, L2RSEM.BAT and LATEX2PNG.BAT is in your search path (e.g. adding to your autoexcec.bat: "PATH=...;...;C:\l2r") or put these files into a folder which is in your search path.

The file L2R.BAT or L2RSEM.BAT will call the DJGPP generated version LATEX2RT.EXE.

If you want to use the option to convert equations to bitmaps (-M 12), you must have TeX, ImageMagick and Ghostscript installed. This works only on win32 systems (win95, win98, winNT4, win2000, winXP) because ImageMagick is available only for win32, not for pure DOS.

• Of TeX, you need a complete installation.
• Of ImageMagick, get the version for Win2000. It will also work under win95 and win98. You only need convert.exe.
• Of Ghostscript, you only need gswin32c.exe and gsdll32.dll.

Either the folders where TeX, ImageMagick and Ghostscript are installed must be in your search path, or you must edit the file LATEX2PNG.BAT and specify the folders where TeX, ImageMagick and Ghostscript are installed in the SET commands, e.g.

...
rem Set path to latex here (ending with \)
rem     if it isn't in your search path:
SET TEXDIR=C:\texmf\miktex\bin\

rem Set path to ImageMagick's convert here (ending with \)
rem     if it isn't in your search path:
SET MAGICKDIR=C:\ImageMagick\

rem Set path to Ghostscript's gswin32c.exe here (NOT ending with \)
rem     if it isn't in your search path:
SET GSDIR=C:\Aladdin\gs6.01\bin

Macintosh

If you want a MacOS X version, make sure that you have installed the developer tools CD that is appropriate for your OS version, and then follow the directions above for UNIX installation.

There is a classic MacOS PPC port of the 1.9k of LaTeX2RTF and I have made a binary distribution of this application. Unfortunately, because I (Scott Prahl) do all development under MacOS X, the binaries for the Classic version often lag (far) behind the current UNIX version.

To convert a LaTeX file, just drag the file onto the LaTeX2RTF application icon. The translation is best if there are .aux and .bbl files in the same folder as the .tex file to be converted. These should be generated using LaTeX and bibtex.

Problems Compiling

The code for LaTeX2RTF is standard ANSI C. Some possible pitfalls are

• Not correctly defining your compiler in the Makefile. The default is to use gcc.
• Encountering errors because the compiler options. During development all compiler warnings are turned on. However, different compilers have different interpretations of -Wall and -pedantic and so may generate errors that were not found in a different development system. Plese report these, but a quick fix is to remove all compiler options.
• Not defining RTFPATH (either as environment variable or by the command line parameter -P).
• Not defining HAS_NO_STRDUP in the Makefile when your system lacks this facility.

Problems with make check

All the files in the test directory are converted (with more or less success) using LaTeX2RTF and are tested before each CVS check-in and with all released tarballs. If you have successfully compiled LaTeX2RTF then problems are probably caused by

• Not defining RTFPATH.
• Not defining HAS_NO_STRDUP in the Makefile when your system lacks this facility.

Using LaTeX2RTF

• General Assumptions :
• LaTeX2RTF Options :
• Debugging:

General Assumptions

LaTeX2RTF assumes that the .tex file you want to convert is a valid LaTeX

document. The chances of a successful LaTeX2RTF conversion are slightly better than the proverbial snowball's if the .tex file doesn't latex properly. Use LaTeX

to find and correct errors before using LaTeX2RTF .

To correctly convert font names you must edit the fonts.cfg configuration file. This file is used to specify the needed font names and how the LaTeX default font names should be converted to RTF. See Font Configuration. LaTeX variables and user defined commands are not evaluated. They will be simply ignored. To let LaTeX2RTF know the names of variables you can add them in the ignore.cfg file. See Ignore Command.

The environment variable RTFPATH may contain a search path for the support files (all files ending in .cfg). If no file is found during the search in the search-path or if the environment variable is not set, the compiled-in default for the configuration-file directory is used. If the files are not found at all the program aborts.

In the MS-DOS version the search path is separated by `;' in the Unix version by `:'. For the paths themselves apply `\' and `/'. A separator may appear at the beginning or ending of RTFPATH.

Make sure that the configuration files are in the correct directory. LaTeX2RTF will need at least fonts.cfg, direct.cfg, ignore.cfg, english.cfg. You may have to change one ore more of them to suit your needs. See Configuring LaTeX2RTF.

See Missing options, for actual implementations irregularities.

See Reporting Bugs, for information on how to reach the maintainer.

LaTeX2RTF Options

The LaTeX2RTF command converts a LaTeX file into RTF text format. The text and much of the formatting information is translated to RTF making the new file look similar to the original. The command line syntax is:

latex2rtf [-options] inputfile.[tex]

The -options may consist of one or more of the following

-a auxfile

specify an .aux file (for table and figure references) that differs from inputfile.aux. If this is omitted, the name of the inputfile with the suffix replaced .aux'will be taken. You must provide both files (.tex and the .aux) to be able to convert cross-references in a LaTeX file. The .aux is created by running the inputfile.tex through latex.

-b bblfile

Unless an bblfile is specified with the -b option, LaTeX2RTF uses a inputfile.bbl. The bblfile file is used for citations and is typically created by running inputfile.aux through bibtex.

-d

The -d option determines the amount of debugging information to send to stderr while translating. `0' means only Errors, `1' Warning Messages (default) also. These numbers can go as high as `7'.

-i language

used to set the idiom or language used by the LaTeX document. Typically, this is specified in a LaTeX2e document by including \usepackage[language]{babel} where language is one of the languages supported by the babel package. All languages listed in the babel system are supported so far as translations for "Chapter," "References," and the like. Specific support for specific options of the german style package are explictly supported. The french translated names are found in the french.cfg file in the cfg/ directory. See Language Configuration.

-l

same as -i latin1 (Note that the default behavior is to use ansinew which is a superset of latin1). Included for backwards compatibility.

-o outputfile

Unless an outputfile is specified with the -o option, the resulting RTF filename is formed by removing .tex from the inputfile and appending .rtf.

-C codepage

used to specify the character set (code page) used in the LaTeX document. This is only important when non-ansi characters are included in the LaTeX document. Typically this is done in a LaTeX2e file by using \usepackage[codepage]{inputenc} This command is not needed if the above command is already in the LaTeX2e file. You may select any of the following code pages: ansinew, applemac, cp437, cp437de, cp850, cp852, cp865, decmulti, cp1250, cp1252, latin1, latin2, latin3, latin4, latin5, latin9, and next. The default behavior is to use ansinew (code page 1252).

-D dots_per_inch

used to specify the number of dots per inch for equations converted to bitmaps. This value is also used when picture environments are converted to bitmaps as well as when EPS graphics are converted to png files. The default value is 300 dots per inch.

-M#

where # selects the type of equation conversion. Use

-M1

convert displayed equations to RTF

-M2

convert inline equations to RTF

-M4

convert displayed equations to bitmap

-M8

convert inline equations to bitmap

-M16

insert Word comment field that the original equation text

These switches can be added together to get the desired conversion. Handy examples are

-M3

convert both inline and displayed equations to RTF (default)

-M6

convert inline equations to RTF and displayed equations to bitmaps

-M12

convert both inline and displayed equations to bitmaps

Bitmap conversion requires that you have installed a working latex2png script. Producing bitmaps is slow.

-P /path/to/cfg

used to specify the directory that contains the .cfg files

-S

used to specify that semicolons should be used to separate arguments in RTF fields (instead of commas). Typically this is needed when the machine that opens the RTF file has a version of Windows that uses `,' for decimal points.

-V

prints version information on standard output and exits.

-W

includes warnings directly in the RTF file

-Z#

add the specified number of extra } to the end of the RTF file. This is useful for files that are not cleanly converted by LaTeX2RTF .

With no arguments other than switches starting with a "-", LaTeX2RTF acts as a filter, i.e., it reads from stdin and writes to stdout. In addition, diagnostic messages are sent to stderr. If these standard channels are not redirected using < and >, then the input is read from the command line, and both output and error messages are printed on the screen.

If a non-switch argument is present, LaTeX2RTF assumes it is the name of the input file. The file must have extension ".tex" but the extension is optional. The output file is constructed from the input file name by removing the extension ".tex" and adding ".rtf".

Debugging

With the -d option you can specify how much processing information LaTeX2RTF reports. If there is a logfile specified the output goes to this file. Nonetheless Warnings and Errors are logged to stderr always.

Possible values of -d are

0. only errors.
1. Translation Warnings (default).
2. shows preparsing of sections
3. Reasonably high level debugging messages
4. Show all function calls
5. Show all each character as it is processed
6. Show processing of characters as they are output as well

Features

In this chapter you find what styles is LaTeX2RTF supposed to translate correctly to RTF.

• LaTeX2e:
• Input Encoding :
• Language Support :
• Cross References :
• Equations :
• Tables :
• Graphics :
• Pagestyles :
• Hyperlatex :

LaTeX2e

LaTeX2RTF understands most of the commands introduced with LaTeX2e . It supports both the old 2.09 version of \documentstyle[options]{format#} and the newer \documentclass[options]{format}.

Input Encoding

It is not necesary to specify the -C option if you use \usepackage{isolatin1} or \documentstyle[isolatin1]{...}. LaTeX2RTF automagically detects these packages/style options and switches to processing of ISO-Latin1 codes.

Language Support

The following languages from the Babel package are supported: afrikaans, german, nynorsk, spanish, bahasa, dutch, icelandic, polish, swedish, basque, english, portuges, turkish, brazil, esperanto, irish, romanian, usorbian, breton, estonian, italian, samin, welsh, catalan, finnish, latin, scottish, croatian, lsorbian, serbian, czech, french, magyar, slovak, danish, galician, norsk, slovene,

The only thing that these files do is to translate various words usually emitted by LaTeX during processing. For example, this ensures that the LaTeX2RTF will provide the correct translation of the word "Chapter" in the converted document.

You can select any of the above languages using the -l option. This is not needed if your LaTeX file contains \usepackage[language]{babel}.

Encountering the german package or documentstyle option (by H. Partl of the Viena University) makes LaTeX2RTF behave like that: German Quotes, German Umlauts by "a, etc.... This support is programmed directly into LaTeX2RTF and supporting similar features for other languages will require patching the source code.

See Language Configuration, for details on how to write a language.cfg file for your language by yourself.

Cross References

Cross references include everything that you might expect and then some: bibliographic citations, equation references, table references, figure references, and section references. Section, equation, table and figure references are implemented by placing RTF bookmarks around the equation number (or table number or figure number).

Page references work but are implemented as "warm" cross-references. This means that Word does not automatically update the page references when the file is opened. To update the page references you must select the entire document (in Word) and press F9.

Bibliographic references currently require that a valid .aux file be present. This is where LaTeX2RTF obtains the reference numbers. It would be nice if LaTeX2RTF just automatically numbered the references when there was no .aux file, but LaTeX2RTF does not do this yet.

Footnotes are implemented and appear at the bottom of each page.

Indexing is reasonable well supported. The simple mark-up of makeindex

\index{topic!subtopic@\textit{subtopic}}

Currently, there is no support for \labels of \items in enumerate environments.

The conversion of cross-references is not perfect because of the different mechanisms in the LaTeX and Word worlds. In particular, if there are multiple \label in a figure, table, or section environment then only the first gets processed. It is also possible to confuse the LaTeX2RTF in eqnarray environments.

Equations

There are four separate levels of equation translation based on the -M switch, See LaTeX2RTF Options. Each equation is now converted either to an EQ field or to a bitmap.

This is an interim solution (for some definition of "interim"). Ideally the equations would become OLE equation objects in the RTF file, but this needs to be implemented.

Some functions in the EQ fields have two or more parameters with a separator between each two. Unfortunately, the interpretation of these separators depends on the country specific settings in the MS Windows system in which the rtf file is opened. E.g. in English versions of MS Windows, the default parameter separator is the comma, in German versions the default is the semicolon. If the parameter in the RTF file does not match the Windows setting, some EQ fields are not interpreted correctly. You can check and set the separator in [Windows control panel - country settings - numbers - list separator]. By default, latex2rtf uses the comma as separator. If latex2rtf is called with the command line parameter -S , the semicolon is inserted as parameter delimiter.

Tables

The table code is currently barely working. It needs to be rewritten.

Graphics

There is now rudimentary support for \includegraphics. Three file types will be inserted into the RTF file without needing conversion: .pict, .jpeg, and .png files. EPS files are converted to PNG using convert from the ImageMagick package.

Pagestyles

If there is no \pagestyle command, the RTF output is generated as with plain pagestyle, i.e. each page get's its page number centered at the bottom.

You must turn this off with the \pagestyle{empty} command in the LaTeX file if you don't want pagenumbers. The headings and myheadings styles are silently ignored by now. The twosided option to the \documentstyle or \documentclass produces the corresponding RTF tokens. Note that these features require RTF Version 1.4.

Hyperlatex

Hyperlatex support is largely broken at the moment, but continues to improve.

Otfried Schwarzkopf has created the "Hyperlatex Markup Language" which is a "little package that allows you to use LaTeX to prepare documents in HTML." It brings an Emacs lisp program with it to convert the Hyperlatex file to HTML. Hyperlatex can be obtained from the CTAN-sites, See Availability. There are two convenient commands that avoid typing: \link and \xlink that generate an "internal" label which then is used in the following \Ref and \Pageref commands.

LaTeX makes it possible to write `\link{anchor}[ltx]{label}', which typesets: `anchor ltx'. LaTeX2RTF does NOT support this aproach since the optional parameter is thrown away right now, See LaTeX2RTF under Development.

Note that you have to update your .cfg files if you are upgrading, since there are a lot of HTML oriented commands in Hyperlatex that we simply can `ignore'.

Configuring LaTeX2RTF

• Input processing :
• Output formatting :
• Direct Conversion :
• Ignore Command :
• Font Configuration :
• Language Configuration :

Input processing

On processing input LaTeX2RTF first converts the LaTeX special characters. If it encounters one of the standard commands it is converted internally. If a command is not known to LaTeX2RTF it is first looked up in direct.cfg and the RTF code specified there is output. If not found there it is looked up in the section ignore.cfg. This file includes a lot of LaTeX

commands that do not affect the output (cross reference information and the like), or that we are not able or willing to convert to RTF.

You can use ignore.cfg if you get tired of seeing

WARNING: command: `foo' not found - ignored

LaTeX2RTF accepts Unix, MS-DOS, and Macintosh line ending codes (\n, \r\n and \r). The files it creates are the line ending for the platform on which LaTeX2RTF was compiled.

The LaTeX file may have been created with a wide variety of character sets. If the LaTeX lacks the \package[codepage]{inputenc} definition, then you may need to use the command line switch to manually select the proper code page. See Input Encoding.

Output formatting

On writing output, LaTeX2RTF generates \n as line ending code. Your RTF Reader should accept this on any platform. If you ftp your RTF file from or to MS-DOS platforms the line ending code can be converted to \r\n. As this should also be legal to any RTF Reader the resulting RTF rendering should not be affected.

LaTeX2RTF does not offer a whole lot of flexibility in how files are translated, but it does offer some. This flexibility resides in four files direct.cfg, ignore.cfg, fonts.cfg, and language.cfg. These filese are documented in the next four sections.

Direct Conversion

The file direct.cfg is used for converting LaTeX commands by simple text replacement. The format consists of lines with a LaTeX command with backslash followed by comma. The rest of the line until a . character will be written to the RTF file when the command is found in the LaTeX file. Lines starting with a # character are ignored. After the . everything is ignored to end of line. To select a specific font use *fontname*, where fontname be defined in fonts.cfg. To write the * character use **.

\alpha,{\f*Symbol* a}. #alpha in the Symbol Font
\copyright,\'a9.

Ignore Command

The file ignore.cfg is used for defining how to ignore specific commands. This file is used for recognition of LaTeX variables, user defined variables, and some simple commands. All variables are ignored but the converter must know the names to correctly ignore assignments to variables. Lines in this file consist of a variable name with backslash, followed by comma and the type of the variable followed by .. Possible types are

NUMBER

simple numeric value

MEASURE

numeric value with following unit of measure

OTHER

ignores anything to the first character after = and from there to next space. e.g., \setbox\bak=\hbox

COMMAND

ignores anything to next \ and from there to the occurence of anything but a letter e.g., \newbox\bak

SINGLE

ignore single command e.g., \noindent

PARAMETER

ignores a command with one parameter e.g., \foo{bar}

PACKAGE

does not produce a Warning message if PACKAGE is encountered, e.g., `PACKAGE,kleenex.'

ENVCMD

proceses contents of unknown environment as if it were plain LaTeX

eg. `ENVCMD,environ.' Therefore \begin{environ} text \end{environ}' as `text'.

ENVIRONMENT

ignores contents of that environment, e.g., with `ENVIRONMENT,ifhtml.' \begin{ifhtml} text \end{ifhtml} ignores `text'.

The types are in upper case exactly as above. Do not use spaces. Lines starting with a # character are ignored. After the . everything is ignored to end of line. Example:

\pagelength,MEASURE.

Font Configuration

The file fonts.cfg contains the font name mapping. For example, this file determines what font is used to represent \rm characters in the RTF file.

A line consists of a font name in LaTeX followed by comma and a font name in RTF. The end is marked by a .. No spaces are allowed. The LaTeX font will be converted to the RTF font when it is found in the LaTeX file. If multiple translations for the same LaTeX font are specified, only the first is used. All fonts in a LaTeX file that are not in this file will be mapped to the default font. All RTF fonts listed in this file will be in every RTF file header whether used or not. Lines starting with a # character are ignored. After the . everything is ignored to end of line.

To add a RTF font not used as substitute for a LaTeX font -- for example a Symbol font used in direct.cfg -- use a dummy LaTeX name like in the following

Dummy3,MathematicalSymbols.

Make sure you use the correct font name. Take care of spaces in font names. The default fonts are named Roman \rm, Slanted \sl, Sans Serif \sf, Typewriter \tt, or Calligraphic \cal.

Language Configuration

The file(s) language.cfg control the translation of LaTeX 's "hardcoded" sectioning names. The standard LaTeX styles have some fixed Title names like `Part', `Reference' or `Bibliography' that appeared in English or German in the output with the original versions of LaTeX2RTF .

It is unlikely that you will need to create a new language.cfg file. However, just look at one of the existing files and follow the pattern. The format is really simple.

Error Messages and Logging

As stated in the Debugging section, LaTeX2RTF provides a means to control the amount of debugging information through the -d# switch. By using a debugging level of 4, you can get a pretty good idea of what LaTeX command caused the problem and what line that command might be found on.

Fatal error messages

indicate a bug in the source code. PLEASE report them, if they do not apear in the documentation. See Reporting Bugs.

Error messages

always abort the program and are caused by conditions that prevent further conversion of the input file. Typically this is cause by LaTeX2RTF getting hopelessly confused by the number of braces in the LaTeX file.

Warning messages

inform you, that there is some conversion loss from LaTeX to RTF, or that the output file has some restrictions on some RTF Readers. Most of these warnings can be supressed by add the offending command to the ignore.cfg file.

Error and Warning messages should follow the GNU Coding standards, i.e. they have the format

inputfile':line: Error|Warning: message

You can also control the level of debugging output by inserting \verbositylevel{#} in the LaTeX file. This is very handy if you have a large LaTeX file that is failing in only a small section. For example,

problem free latex file ....
\verbositylevel{5}
problematic code
\verbositylevel{0}

Error reporting and logging still has many inconsistencies, but it gets better with each release. Don't try to make any sense in debugging levels above 4, these are for my own delight only and can change significantly between versions.

The inputfile may be incorrectly identified if it is incorporated through \input or \include. The line may be also be wrong at times. See Known Bugs.

LaTeX2RTF under Development

• Unimplemented Features :
• Missing options :
• Known Bugs :
• Reporting Bugs :
• Todo List :

Unimplemented Features

• LaTeX2RTF ignores some of the optional parameters of \documentstyle
• Need to finish code page support. Some characters that need to be constructed using RTF \field commands are not implemented.
• Add the code to produce the corresponding chapter, section, and page numbering with headings and myheadings pagestyles. Implement \markboth and \markright.
• To support \tableofcontents there would be two approaches: Transfer sectioning information, title text and then produce page numbers by the rtf- reader. Scan and label all of the sectioning commands while reading and then construct the sectioning information using these labels. Needs two passes on LaTeX input.
• Include the GNU gettext package to internationalize LaTeX2RTF 's Messages.

Missing options

Missing or buggy command line options.

-V

The version information output is not compatible with the GNU Coding Standards.

-d

Information logging and Error reporting is not implemented consistently. Need to test and track problems with the linenumber and with the file name.

-?

There should be an option to intersperse RTF-Output with the LaTeX input that produced it to aid debugging.

-q

There should be a -q (quiet) option, to suppress Warning Messages. By now this can be achieved by the -d0 option.

-rmajor.minor

There should be an option that restrict the generation of RTF code with version greater than major,minor. Actually this is done at compile time. There are some Warning messages if "newer" RTF Code is generated, but it is not consistent at all.

--long_names

It would be useful to implement the GNU long option names, e.g.: `-debug', `-output_file', `-quiet', etc. This could be done by switching to the GNU getopt package.

Known Bugs

1. The first parameter of a \link{anchor}[ltx]{label} is converted to the rtf-output. Label is stored to hyperref for later use, the optional parameter is ignored. [ltx] should be processed as Otfried recommends it, to use for exclusive LaTeX output.e.g: \link{readhere}[~\Ref]{explaining: chapter}. Since {explaining:chapter} is yet read by LaTeX and hyperlatex when [...] is evaluated it produces the correct reference. LaTeX2RTF is only strolling from left to right through the text and can't remember what she will see in the future.
2. The diagnostics routine does not output the correct (actual) inputfilename. (`.aux', `.bbl', \input).

Reporting Bugs

Report bugs to to the bug tracking system at SourceForge. Only report bugs for the latest version of LaTeX2RTF that is available. Please provide the following information and observe the following guidelines when reporting a bug in the program:

1. State the version of LaTeX2RTF that you are using. You can get the version by specifying the -V option to LaTeX2RTF .
2. Specify the your operating system and version. Be sure to check the file `Makefile' for settings that may be specific to your machine, especially for some versions of SunOS there may be settings which are needed to compile successfully. Do this before submitting a bug report.
3. If the program produces wrong output or does not work for you, include a short LaTeX file along with a description of the problem. Isolating the bug into a small LaTeX file does two things. First, it provides a file that can be used to test future versions of LaTeX2RTF and second, it certainly improves the chances that the bug will get some attention. Do not send me large LaTeX or RTF files, I simply do not have the time to wade through large files to search for a bug!
4. Be patient. I am maintaining the program in my free time. I did not write most of the code. Often I do not have the time to answer to your question. I will, however, try to fix reported bugs in upcoming releases.

Todo List

Scott's ToDo list

• Use lex/yacc to implement getSection
• Rewrite table code
• Add support for pagestyle
• Improve graphic/graphicx support
• Better support for ignoring commands

Georg's todo list

• Make this Manual more consistent, the ToDo and Known Bug List shorter and the Features List longer.
• Harmonize all of the error and warning messages.
• Put warnings everywhere applicable about producing RTF 1.4 tokens.
• Provide an Error and Warning recovery guide to the user.
• Add a chapter with lists of all LaTeX commands that convert, and that do not convert to RTF, including their status (for future releases, never, partially functional, ...).

Index for LaTeX2RTF

• Copyright issues: History
• History of the programm: History

Table of Contents

• LaTeX2RTF
• History & Copyright
• Introduction
• Availability
• Installing LaTeX2RTF
  • General
  • UNIX
  • DOS or Windows
  • Macintosh
  • Problems Compiling
  • Problems with make check
• Using LaTeX2RTF
  • General Assumptions
  • LaTeX2RTF Options
  • Debugging
• Features
  • LaTeX2e
  • Input Encoding
  • Language Support
  • Cross References
  • Equations
  • Tables
  • Graphics
  • Pagestyles
  • Hyperlatex
• Configuring LaTeX2RTF
  • Input processing
  • Output formatting
  • Direct Conversion
  • Ignore Command
  • Font Configuration
  • Language Configuration
• Error Messages and Logging
• LaTeX2RTF under Development
  • Unimplemented Features
  • Missing options
  • Known Bugs
  • Reporting Bugs
  • Todo List
• Index for LaTeX2RTF