[OS X TeX] LaTeX to ePub Format ???

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 05.04.2010 um 23:19 schrieb Adam M. Goldstein:

> There is going to be a limit to what TeX4ht can do, right? Because  
> it only works for a limited set of macros?

No. These are limitations in other convertors which try to translate  
macros. TeX4ht produces a DVI file which it then tries to convert into  
some HTML format. Parts of this translation are changes in character  
encoding (the DVI could be based on a 7-bit font encoding like OT1 and  
ë being presented as ¨ and e) and graphics file type. As DVI supports  
for the dvips convertor only PS based images TeX4ht looks for PS and  
EPS files, which are converted to PNG format for the (X)HTML output.  
Part of the translation is also a loss of text flow around floats  
(wrapfig, picinpar, and such), it all becomes sequential. And  
sometimes the fonts used are exchanged because TeX4ht has its own font  
format.

Certainly there are many options I never discovered.

>
>> Otherwise a conversion from the PDF file should work OK since all  
>> images and all text can easily be extracted. Not that easy can be  
>> re-assembling it to something which resembles the previous.
>
> I tried to convert from PDF to eBook with Calibre with a moderately- 
> but-not-very complex PDF volume. The result wasn't acceptable,  
> though it wasn't a complete loss. For one thing, it seems to have  
> put in a link everywhere there is an index tag in a paragraph, which  
> appears in bold. There were other funny things that happened, a few  
> things that moved around, for instance.
>
> It didn't seem to handle the internal links too well, either.

I'm sure calibre's command line tools offer a bit more control, though  
I'm also sure that the new look will be quite different.

>
> My thought is that one ought to have something like two setups, one  
> for PDF output destined for hard copy or the screen, the other for  
> the eBook format. The latter might be simpler for easier transition  
> to eBook format.


The pdfscreen package could be useful. It allows for example to set up  
different "paper" sizes, a small one for screen = ePub and another one  
for print use. But it also adds navigation elements... (which can be  
customised – and also omitted?)

--
Greetings

   Pete

 From error to error, one discovers the entire truth.
				- Sigmund Freud