Word Perfect to LaTex

[Gustavus]

I do all of my word processing in Word Perfect. Several professional journals will only accept submissions in LaTex -- which I do not know how to use.

There is a bit of software called WP2Latex to which you certainly would not entrust a research paper. Figures inserted in the paper in device independent bitmaps are lost, many control characters are either lost or misinterpreted so the converted paper may look entirely different than you intended etc.

Quick question: Do any of you have experience with a more satisfactory way to get from a source document in .wpd to a .tex final?

Thanks

 

[Fayd]

well, for starters, the two are not similar in scope or idea, so there's no way to translate a document from one to the other cleanly. I do all my word processing in LaTeX, (either Rstudio with knitr, or TeXnicCenter) so my opinion may not be worth much.

that said, a good word processing utility to use with TeX output for those that aren't TeX savvy would be LyX. It should be fairly fast to copy and paste the contents of your article over to LyX and produce a good output.

 

[Qwertilot]

You won't be able to get things looking quite how you want them in LaTeX. It takes control of an awful lot of the layout/formatting automatically. Happily it does a very good job of this.

That's actually one of the big reasons the journals etc like it - they can provide a style file which you just compile with and everything ends up looking the same.
(It is also an order of magnitude or so better for equations, massive documents etc.).

An actual LaTeX file is just raw text with sundry formatting codes in it. A bit like html and things.

So you'll have to copy/paste the raw text over from word perfect, then apply the appropriate control codes for section/chapter headers, figures etc. It shouldn't be too bad.

References work very nicely via Bibtex.

 

[mv2devnull]

I have not seen WP for over 20 years.

well, for starters, the two are not similar in scope or idea

Well, a wpd file probably contains content (text, images) and formatting codes, which WP can print to paper in some shape.
A LaTeX file contains content (text, images) and formatting codes, which LaTeX interprets and typesets into printable format (Postscript, PDF).
The thing is that if you edit with a WYSIABNQWYW, the formatting codes are hidden from your eyes. LaTeX can be edited as source.

Conversion from one format to another is obviously the great challenge, because it is hard to create 1-to-1 mappings. CSI might be able to "enhance" a 2x2 pixel image into crisp 1920x1080 pixel image, but the rest of us have to guess.


Quick websearch returns primarily the WP2Latex, but someone has used Open/LibreOffice to import *.wpd and then export LaTeX.

TeX is a language. Your *.tex is "source" code and you "compile" it to "binary" dvi/ps/pdf. Images are not embedded in the *.tex; they are included during compilation.

Some journals do provide their style-file and an example *.tex for you that demonstrates the structure that they do prefer. Overall, the less you have local formatting, the better. That rule is true for all formats, not just LaTeX.

 

[Gustavus]

Thanks for the replies. Sounds like I have a serious problem in getting manuscripts into LaTex. I use Word Perfect by choice since it is far more author friendly for preparing mathematical manuscripts than Word. I can publish to pdf from Word Perfect and even the journals that demand tex documents for publication accept pdf documents for review. I prepare figures in Postscript and insert them into the Word Perfect manuscript as device independent bitmaps. The finished document preserves all formatting and figures in the pdf version -- perfect one-to-one of course.

Years ago I had to give up submitting papers to the American Mathematical Society publications for just this reason, but now the journals I really wish to publish in have gone to LaTex too.

WP2Latex does convert the text -- but formatting control symbols are not always interpreted correctly. The bitmap figures are lost of course. I have been told that Scientific Workplace 5.5 can do a better job, but it will be expensive to find out.

The obvious solution would be to learn LaTex but after some effort have concluded it would be easier to learn Hungarian or Swedish.

I am nor familiar with LyX. Will look into it today. Thanks for the tip.

 

[mv2devnull]

Math equations are one of the primary forces that created (La)TeX.
LaTeX can include EPS, so you would use your original vector graphics.

LyX http://www.lyx.org/ , like Word and WP, hides the format codes. Nice for some, but not my cup of tea.

Personally, I have found LaTeX easier than Swedish.

 

[Gustavus]

Fayd

Took forever, but LyX finally announced "Congratulations, you have successfully installed Lyx"

The box to open Lyn was checked, but it did not open. Will see what I can do.

Thanks for the tip. Hope LyX will allow me to get manuscripts into a form the journal will accept. Some journals ask for camera ready pdf files -- that I can easily do even with very unusual formatting requirements. Wish they all did.

Note added:
Got LyX to open and am reading the help file.

 

[Fayd]

Math equations are one of the primary forces that created (La)TeX.
LaTeX can include EPS, so you would use your original vector graphics.

LyX http://www.lyx.org/ , like Word and WP, hides the format codes. Nice for some, but not my cup of tea.

Personally, I have found LaTeX easier than Swedish.

Yeah, i personally use a strait LaTeX editor, not LyX. but he asked for something easy to use, and a lot of people recommend LyX.

 

[Gustavus]

Thanks for steering me to LyX. Have read the Introduction and Tutorial and believe it will do the job. And it's free! Scientific Workplace -- even for teachers -- is $630 and the best price I found on e-Bay for an earlier version was $239.

I have a 15 page manuscript with 12 figures and two tables to start with so should get reasonably proficient by the time it is done.