Why K-Talk's software doesn't work for me

last substantial update: May 25, 1998
editorial update: Oct. 10, 2008

Distinguish two groups of causes why K-Talk's software doesn't work for me:

A. General Problems

1. K-Talk's software uses their own formula editor "MathEdit", which is incompatible with Microsoft's equation editor. Therefore if I convert a LaTeX file to word, only users having K-Talk's MathEdit are able to use the converted file.

2. On the PC wordprocessor side, K-Talk's software primarily uses the WordPerfect 5.1 format. MS Word users must install extra macros for conversion to a "tagged document file".
These macros however are written for Word6 and need some dlls belonging to word6 which I don't have because I have word7(95). So I could not get them running.

3. Capacity: on converting the "LaTeX2e Kurzbeschreibung" (from CTAN, "l2kurz.tex" plus include-files) I get the error message "file l2k2.tex too large to include".
As LaTeX is intended for large documents, a professional converter should be able to convert large documents!

B. Localization Problems

1. In addition to being not compatible with MS word versions later than word6, the word macros need to be localized if one doesn't have the English version of Word.

2. TexPort doesn't recognize German umlauts used in german.sty - see the converted example "l2kurz"

Sample of Converted Files (LaTeX -> WP)

essent.zip containing the files:
essential.tex, hndout.sty=LaTeX source
essent.wp5=wp5.1 file converted by TexPort

l2kurz.zip containing the files:
l2kurz.tex, l2k1.tex, l2k2.tex, l2k3.tex, l2k4.tex, l2ksym.tex, a4.sty, german.sty=LaTeX source
l2kurz.wp5=wp5.1 file converted by TexPort

where essential.tex and l2kurz.tex are originals from CTAN.
(Meanwhile these files got updated on CTAN. If you want to use these files for other purpose than reproducing my conclusion, get the current versions from CTAN.)

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