README for: escapeTeXt.py

This Python program tries to turn plain text into something that can
get through LaTeX.  The motivating application is to put text gathered
in a web application into a report generated in LaTeX.

1) This program can be called from the command line.  These commands 
run Project Gutenberg's version of Jack London's _Call Of the Wild_.
  ./escapeTeXt.py -l -ocallw10.ltx < callw10.txt
  pdflatex callw10.ltx
  acroread callw10.pdf
The result is not pretty; the program makes no attempt to recognize 
sections, etc.  (For this, there are programs on the web specialized  
to do Gutenberg texts.)  But the text makes it through.

Here is the usage statement for the command line program:
  convertTeXt.py: Convert plain text so it may make it through LaTeX 
     convertTeXt.py [options] 
  where the options are
    -f filename (default None) file to read from; if None then stdin is used
    -o filename (default None) file to write to; if None then stdout is used
    -c Turn off the attempt to balance open and closed quotes
    -r Turn off the refinements (em dashes, en dashes ..)
    -l Add simple LaTeX header and footer 
    -v (default True) sets verbose output
    --help or -?  Give this usage statement


2) The routines can also be called from other Python programs.  Thus, in 
a makeReport.py program the code
  import escapeTeXt
   :
  s=getUserResponseFromDb()
  result=escapeTeXt.escapetext(s).output()
gets as "result" the text that will then be printed into the LaTeX file.


Author: Jim Hefferon, based on txt2latex by Tristan Miller
Date: 2006-Aug-27