[comp.text.tex] WP2LaTeX, was: Re: Comparing word processors with TeX

braams@pttrnl.nl (Johannes L. Braams) (02/27/91)

In article <1991Feb24.014010.28426@watmath.waterloo.edu>, nmouawad@watmath.waterloo.edu (Naji Mouawad) writes:
...
> 
>  I had to write a long text (about 90 pages in 11 pt) with no
> subdivisions whatsoever. It was a continuous stream of text divided
> into paragraphs separated by blank lines.
> 
>  In case you do wonder why would anyone do something so stupid, this
> piece of text is a novel.
> 
>  Furthermore, this is a French piece. I have a French version of WP
> with a French keyboard (much easier to type in the French characters
> than in Latex, but again Latex was not designed with French
> characters in mind.) and after finishing those 90 pages, I decided
> to use "wp2latex" to get a latex version of the file, since I prefer
> Tex fonts over Wp fonts.
> 
> Once this tedious operation perfomed, I tried to Latex the file:
> 
> "Sorry out of main memory ..."
> 
> I thought this was because of DOS's memory limitations (I am using
> emTex BTW, excellent!). I transfered my files over my MIPS UNIX account
> and ran Latex on the file:
> 
> "Sorry out of main memory ..."
> 
> Either I am doing something wrong or Latex (maybe it is Tex) cannot
> swallow big unformatted chunks of text... unless you change

	The proble is neither you nor TeX... It's WP2LaTeX.
	What it does is convert each empty line in your formatted
	WP-document into... \\\\ (two times \\). Hence the load
	of underfull hbox messages you undoubtedly saw before TeX
	ran out of main memory.
	Another problem with this approach is that TeX doesn't recognize
	your nice paragraphs anymore, but it sees your text as one big
	paragraph, which it tries to typeset as one chunk of text...
	Running it through bLaTeX will have taken som time I think?
	I haven't had the time to look closely at WP2LaTeX nor to fix it,
	but the LaTeX I've seen coming out of it is *NOT* a good example
	of writing LaTeX-documents. On the other hand, do you know of *ANY*
	document convertor that does it's job *without* you having to
	modify it's output? :-)
-- 

	Johannes Braams

PTT Research Neher Laboratorium,        P.O. box 421,
2260 AK Leidschendam,                   The Netherlands.
Phone    : +31 70 3325051               E-mail : JL_Braams@pttrnl.nl
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