11 Other output formats
It is possible to translate LATEX file into other formats than
HTML. There are two such formats: plain text and info files.
This enables producing postscript,
HTML, plain text and info manuals from one (LATEX) input file.
The LATEX file is processed and converted into a plain text
formatted file. It allows some pretty-printing in plain text.
To translate into text, invoke HEVEA as follow:
# hevea -text [-w <width>] myfile.tex
Then, HEVEA produces myfiles.txt a plain text translation
of myfile.tex.
Additionally, the optional argument -w <number> sets the
width of the output for text formatting. By default, The text will be
72 characters wide.
Nearly every environments have been translated, included lists and tables.
The support is nearly the same as in HTML, excepted in some cases
described hereafter.
Most style changes are ignored, because it is hardly
possible to render them in plain text. Thus, there are no italics,
bold fonts, underlinings, nor size change or colors...
The only exception is for the verbatim environment
that puts the text inside quotes, to distinguish it more easily.
Tables with borders are rendered in the same spirit as in LATEX.
Thus for instance, it is possible to get vertical lines between some
columns only.
Table rendering can be poor in case of line overflow.
The only way to correct this (apart from changing the tables
themselves) is to adjust the formatting width, using the
the -w command line option.
For now, maths are not supported at all in text mode. You can get very weird
results with in-text mathematical formulas.
Of course, simple expressions such as subscripts remains readable.
For instance, x2 will be rendered as x^2
, but ∫01f(x)dx will
yield something like : int01f(x)dx
.
The file format info is also supported.
Info files are text files with limited hypertext links, they
can be read by using emacs info mode or the
info program.
Please note that HEVEA translates plain LATEX to info, and not
TeXinfo.
You can translate your LATEX files into info file(s) as follows:
# hevea -info [-w <width>] myfile.tex
Then, HEVEA produces the file myfile.info, an info
translation of myfile.tex.
However, if the resulting file is too large, it is cut into pieces
automatically,
and myinfo.info now contains references for all
the nodes in the others files, which are named myfile.info-1,
myfile.info-2,...
The optional argument -w
has the same meaning as for text output.
The text will be organized in nodes that follow
the pattern of LATEX sectioning
commands. Menus are created to navigate through the sections easily
A table of content is produced automatically.
References, indexes and footnotes are supported, as they are in
HTML mode.
However, the info format only allows pointers to info nodes,
i.e., in HEVEA case, to sectional units.
As a consequence all cross references lead to sectional unit headers.