Re: [Groff] groff html output, eqn and journals

[Larry Kollar]

Frank Jahnke wrote:

> I have a paper set in groff, and I wish to submit it to a journal for
> publication.  Their standard line is to submit in DOC or RTF formats;
> needless to say, that is not helpful, particularly since it is full of
> differential equations.
> 
> One option that I tried is to use the -Thtml flag to convert the output
> to HTML, and see if I could import that into Word.  Unfortunately, I
> lost all of the text delimited by .EQ and .EN, though the in-line
> equations worked OK.  It also gave me a number of "divide by zero"
> errors, even though the .ps and .pdf files are fine.

Groff can produce decent HTML, but you have to work with it. The difficult part 
is going to be with the equations.

I wonder, though, about the divide-by-zero errors. It sounds to me like 
something important isn't right. Can you recompile the 
CVS version of groff and work with it?

> Suggestions on how I might correct that would be appreciated.  More
> broadly, how have people dealt with collaborating with users who work
> only in Word?  I am working on some heavy-duty math, and PDF (or ps) is
> just not a very helpful form in which to make corrections.

In my experience, producing decent HTML has proven acceptable for sending to 
Word users -- but I don't have equations to deal 
with. I remember ESR saying he was working on a patch to eqn that would output 
MathML, but I have no clue whether there's any 
plug-ins or converters to get MathML into Word either.

I need to write up some of my tips&tricks for getting good HTML out of groff....

-- Larry