General ⇒ Why exactly is this not possible?

[Yeats]

First of all I must say that I am just an average LaTeX user and that I ask this question as a "layman".

Using LaTeX for two years now made me realise all its positive and negative aspects. This topic is about one of that negative aspects with which I have problem:

If you need your LaTeX text to be proof-readed you can do this either by sending your original LaTeX code (which is in most cases unacceptable for the lector, unless he is profound in LaTeX which is rarely the case) or you can send PDF versions in which case lector is unable to make editing directly on your text which is just lame.

The third option is to use some LaTeX to rtf (doc) converter which are really bad and in the most cases they don't do the job - or some PDF to rtf (doc) converter which are practically making a Word-picture of your PDF file which is if you are typing your text with more languages (I mostly use greek, hebrew and latin) ridiculous .

Now my question is following:

Why isn't it possible to make LaTeX that way to be able to directly get rtf document as an output instead the PDF one?

I know that would be a lot of work, but that would provide future to the LaTeX because most publishers are not willing to take LaTeX or PDF files nowadays.

So this is just a technical question! Would this be theoretically possible and how hard it would be to do that?

[frabjous]

RTF is a rather old, and a very simple file format; it really can't handle half of the things LaTeX is capable of. You already know of the latex to rtf converters out there, and their shortcomings. I doubt it's possible to improve on them much. The problem isn't that the converters are bad, the problem is that the rtf format just can't handle that much. (Though I actually think latex2rtf isn't all that bad, all things considered.)

(The RTF format is also owned by and under the control of Microsoft, and I personally dislike using any proprietary format to store my work. No corporation should own any portion of my work merely in virtue of having created a format.)

Consider using htlatex (which comes with most distributions these days I think) for outputting to html via tex4ht; this can be read in by most Word Processors and supports more than rtf does. There's even the oolatex scripts for using tex4ht to convert to open document format (used by OpenOffice, and supported by recent versions of Word), which may be a nice thing to try.

[Yeats]

Consider using htlatex (which comes with most distributions these days I think) for outputting to html via tex4ht; this can be read in by most Word Processors and supports more than rtf does. There's even the oolatex scripts for using tex4ht to convert to open document format (used by OpenOffice, and supported by recent versions of Word), which may be a nice thing to try.

First of all thank you for your answer!

I am trying to find htlatex but I cant. Could you please provide me with the link?

Also htlatex doesnt seams to be a part of MacTex distribution which I am using. I hope its possible to install it on Mac.

I still think things can be made much simpler. We need a way to enable proof-reading of LaTeX document by the people which does not use LaTeX. At least I feel such thing is needed.

[meho_r]

...

If you need your LaTeX text to be proof-readed you can do this either by sending your original LaTeX code (which is in most cases unacceptable for the lector, unless he is profound in LaTeX which is rarely the case) or you can send PDF versions in which case lector is unable to make editing directly on your text which is just lame.

...

Firstly, you should NOT let an editor or anyone else do direct changes in your document. NEVER EVER!

Secondly, PDF files are ideal for this purpose (sending the file with document layout completed is another bonus, because the editor can see how your work is supposed to look like when printed, so s/he can make additional valuable remarks about this too). Your editor/lector may use free tools like PDF-XChange Viewer (Windows version, works on Linux through wine; not sure about Mac) and similar applications while reviewing your text, highlight and mark problematic parts, and comment on them, using many reviewing tools provided by these apps. After editor's work is done, you should be the one who will make necessary corrections in the original (.tex) document. This is how reviewing process should go. So, I don't think LaTeX lacks anything in this regard.

[Yeats]

Firstly, you should NOT let an editor or anyone else do direct changes in your document. NEVER EVER!

Secondly, PDF files are ideal for this purpose (sending the file with document layout completed is another bonus, because the editor can see how your work is supposed to look like when printed, so s/he can make additional valuable remarks about this too). Your editor/lector may use free tools like PDF-XChange Viewer (Windows version, works on Linux through wine; not sure about Mac) and similar applications while reviewing your text, highlight and mark problematic parts, and comment on them, using many reviewing tools provided by these apps. After editor's work is done, you should be the one who will make necessary corrections in the original (.tex) document. This is how reviewing process should go. So, I don't think LaTeX lacks anything in this regard.

So basically what you are telling me to do is to:

1. Ask my lector to learn completely new program and work with it
2. Enter all corrections that he did back to my latex file manually as if entering all latex commands in delatexted text I send now is not hard enough?

And instead of that I could simply use proof-tool that Word has which lets you just accept changes that someone did!

And you find that ideal? Now, what if (such in my case) someone is writing on a foreign language and there is like million small errors to correct, words in sentences are not in right order article is missing... do you have any idea how much corrections would lector have to do? And dont you think its easier for him to move words then to make numbers above them in order to change their order?

I did not ask here to be learned how PDF is much better for correcting than rtf - that was not my question - I know that it isn't or else I wouldn't make this topic at all, wouldn't I?

LaTeX has a big flaw and thats his inaccessibility to the non-LaTeX users. Making such options as direct compiling into some broadly used format such as .rtf (it doesn't have to be rtf if that is commercial) would simplify the things for us that needs to switch between two words, and most of us must do exactly that.

[meho_r]

So basically what you are telling me to do is to:

1. Ask my lector to learn completely new program and work with it

If your "lector" isn't able to use a simple PDF Reader, you really shouldn't send him/her anything digital anyway, but print the draft and let him/her do the markings on paper.

2. Enter all corrections that he did back to my latex file manually as if entering all latex commands in delatexted text I send now is not hard enough?

And instead of that I could simply use proof-tool that Word has which lets you just accept changes that someone did!

And you find that ideal? Now, what if (such in my case) someone is writing on a foreign language and there is like million small errors to correct, words in sentences are not in right order article is missing... do you have any idea how much corrections would lector have to do? And dont you think its easier for him to move words then to make numbers above them in order to change their order?

If you wasn't talking about sending digital copies of your work to a "lector", I'd simply tell you to send him/her draft on paper, since a large number of editors (most of them?) work on paper anyway. And yes, if you make a million errors, then you should do a million corrections.

I did not ask here to be learned how PDF is much better for correcting than rtf - that was not my question - I know that it isn't or else I wouldn't make this topic at all, wouldn't I?

LaTeX has a big flaw and thats his inaccessibility to the non-LaTeX users. Making such options as direct compiling into some broadly used format such as .rtf (it doesn't have to be rtf if that is commercial) would simplify the things for us that needs to switch between two words, and most of us must do exactly that.

"Simpler" isn't "better" in many cases, and editing is one of them. Maybe you misunderstand the very purpose of LaTeX. If you want editing/reviewing features you're talking about, then maybe you should use OpenOffice.org Writer (or even MS Word) while preparing initial version of your document, and after all editing is done and errors corrected, export it to .tex and do the final check and layout work. Or, alternatively (and if your editor doesn't mind), use LyX, which is a frontend for LaTeX and also has reviewing capabilities similar to those of OOo and MSO.

I hope you're aware that .tex document format is basically .txt, so I'm not sure if implementing even most basic reviewing tools on such a simple format is possible at all.

...LaTeX has a big flaw and thats his inaccessibility to the non-LaTeX users...

I disagree. If there is a flaw, it's on user's side, not LaTeX's. LaTeX is available to everyone willing to use it. If someone is not willing to use it/learn it, that's not LaTeX's problem, but that person's problem.

[frabjous]

Don't worry so much about meho_r. Some people can be rather opinionated, but I think he means well.

I am trying to find htlatex but I cant. Could you please provide me with the link?

htlatex is just a script that calls upon tex4ht. There's a page for tex4ht here, but I've never installed it except as part of the TeXlive distribution.

Also htlatex doesnt seams to be a part of MacTex distribution which I am using. I hope its possible to install it on Mac.

Are you sure? I've never used MacTeX (not a big Mac or Apple fan), but I thought MacTeX was just a repackaging of TeXlive and included whatever it did. Do you know what version you have?

(htlatex is a command line program, not something with a GUI, in case that wasn't obvious.)

I still think things can be made much simpler. We need a way to enable proof-reading of LaTeX document by the people which does not use LaTeX. At least I feel such thing is needed.

Exactly how do you envision such a thing working?

What most of us like about LaTeX is that it is a semantic mark-up language, and because of this, has a lot of advantages over the WYSIWYG WordProcessor approach. It's very hard to mix the two approaches without giving up the benefits of both!

But do try out LyX and see if it suits your needs. It's kind of a nice in-between, and should be easy enough to use even by people who don't know LaTeX mark-up.

An alternative, as meho_r, suggests, is to start off with some WordProcessor format, and only later switch over to LaTeX format. The AbiWord word processor is free, open soruce, cross platform, and can read and write most formats. (You could use Google Docs and then import into AbiWord). AbiWord also has a LaTeX export extension (if you install the extra export plugins). There's also writer2latex and similar ways of converting from WordProcessor files to LaTeX when you're done.

[meho_r]

Don't worry so much about meho_r. Some people can be rather opinionated, but I think he means well.

Nah, I've been working with all kinds of editors for years now, and you wouldn't believe what a mess people are able to do with .doc files and other formats. After a couple of disasters, we decided only to give them a hard copy (or, at best, .pdf files, but only if we're sure they are able to review them; we found out that for this purpose the above mention reader is the easiest solution, that's why I recommended it). I hope Yeats wouldn't meet the same problems as I did, 'cause if he does, a million errors can easily become a 3 million additional corrections