RE: DOCBOOK: LaTeX -> DocBook

[Petr Prikryl <Prikryl@skil.cz>]

Dave Pratt wrote...
> 
> I am new to DocBook and LaTeX though both are very 
> understandable and seem
> to have their purpose and niche. I am wondering if there is 
> an extension to
> LaTeX to permit a LaTex to Docbook translation of some type.  
> I like the
> notion that no special tools are required for LaTex and is a
> standard for publication.

I have been using LaTeX for quite a long time.  While LaTeX
sources are usually much more structured-markup oriented
than plain (TeX), its sources may still contain quite a lot of
visual markup (adjusting spacing, italic corrections, etc.).
I am not very good in DocBook yet, but it seems that it is
more structured-markup oriented than LaTeX.  Because of that
I guess that the best way for conversion of LaTeX to DocBook
is the manual editing.  Having jEdit (for example) or any other
decent editor with regular expressions and XML support, 
the manual transformation should not be that difficult.
As any DocBook document can be tested for validity, 
you can prove formally that the result is O.K.

Some time ago, I have read about the LaTeX 3 project.
If I remember well, there is the goal to be able to read
XML version of LaTeX sources.  However, I do not know
more details.

-- 
Petr Prikryl (prikrylp@skil.cz)