[Rant] Convert .tex files to .doc
Posted: Sun Dec 11, 2022 8:08 pm
My book will have some mathematical publications in it. They are fine in their pdf format. But my book's main document is a .odt in Libre Office. So I want my .tex and .pdf files converted into .doc.
One tool I tried was Aspose. It converted the .tex file into a .html file pretty ok. But when I opened the .html file in Libre Office Writer, I was surprised to find out that Libre Office Writer could NOT handle all the fonts and mathematical text (even though it's just a small document). I then decided to see if I could first convert the .tex directly to .doc. Again, it worked but I don't have Microsoft Office so I emailed the doc to my usual machine for writing the book but when I opened it, it looked like all hell. None of the vectors or equations look right. By the way, I did not look at the .html file in Evince - maybe I'l try that. And it looked fine in Web browsers - so the .html file is not the issue. Aspose made an ok .html file. It's something in Libre Office Writer that's the problem. It just looks awful.
So my fundamental questions are:
1) How can I manage the process of converting my pdf files into the .dot environment that I used in Libre Office Writer - is it an issue of fonts or do the converters just stink(my guess).
2) Why don't the tools just do a better job? Why is it so much struggle?
So does anyone know how to back-convert pdf files into .odt, .docx, or .doc files so I can edit the book at the .dot level and not have to wait to include the files as a pdf later. I want the whole book written in .odt, then convert it to .doc and .pdf versions.
Thank you.
One tool I tried was Aspose. It converted the .tex file into a .html file pretty ok. But when I opened the .html file in Libre Office Writer, I was surprised to find out that Libre Office Writer could NOT handle all the fonts and mathematical text (even though it's just a small document). I then decided to see if I could first convert the .tex directly to .doc. Again, it worked but I don't have Microsoft Office so I emailed the doc to my usual machine for writing the book but when I opened it, it looked like all hell. None of the vectors or equations look right. By the way, I did not look at the .html file in Evince - maybe I'l try that. And it looked fine in Web browsers - so the .html file is not the issue. Aspose made an ok .html file. It's something in Libre Office Writer that's the problem. It just looks awful.
So my fundamental questions are:
1) How can I manage the process of converting my pdf files into the .dot environment that I used in Libre Office Writer - is it an issue of fonts or do the converters just stink(my guess).
2) Why don't the tools just do a better job? Why is it so much struggle?
So does anyone know how to back-convert pdf files into .odt, .docx, or .doc files so I can edit the book at the .dot level and not have to wait to include the files as a pdf later. I want the whole book written in .odt, then convert it to .doc and .pdf versions.
Thank you.