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<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html><head><title>rtf2TeX and rtf2LaTeX converters</title></head>
<body>
<p> Up to the <a href="http://tug.org">TUG homepage
(external link)</a><br>
Up to <a href="pctotex.html">Converters from PC
Textprocessors to LaTeX - Overview</a></p>
<h1>rtf2TeX and rtf2LaTeX</h1>
<p>last update: Feb 14, 2011</p>
<p>The information provided here is for those who are interested
in the history.
</p>
<p>First, Paul Dubois &lt;dubois "at"
primate.wisc.edu&gt; wrote an RTF reader and
converter to plain text or troff. The version is dated April 1991. <br>
See <a href="http://www.snake.net/software/RTF/">RTF
utilities homepage (external link)</a>.
</p>
<p>a) Based on this reader, Robert Lupton &lt;rhl "at"
astro.princeton.edu&gt; wrote
the <strong>rtf2TeX</strong> converter. Last revision
date: May 1992 </p>
<p>He comments on this as follows (README-file): <br>
citation begin&gt;&gt; <br>
This is a first attempt at an RTF to TeX converter. The parts that
handle fonts and such like seem to work pretty well, although they
could be improved, but the table handling is a problem. I had a good
deal of trouble trying to figure out what particular rtf control codes
were supposed to do; this makes it hard
to convert them into TeX. I have tried to produce good TeX, but this is
not easy due to the sloppy way that many RTF writers generate redundant
font and other changes. <br>
Many things are not handled at all, more due to my lacking motivation
than to their intrinsic difficulty. For example, I don't support double
columns, but it would be easy enough to do (I'd generate a control
sequence to do it, and add the TeX code required to the TeX_defs file.
I even have the TeX somewhere...).
<br>
&lt;&lt;citation end</p>
<p>So far the beginning of the README file. Later he commented: <br>
citation begin&gt;&gt; <br>
Most (all?) RTF is hopelessly unstructured <br>
(the equivalent of \bf \it Hello \rm World \bf He \it \rm said. ) <br>
and the code that I wrote tries valiantly to convert this to something
sensible, in this case <br>
{\it Hello\/} World {\bf He} said. <br>
It is this attempt to make the output TeX usable that makes the code
complicated... <br>
I did not try to convert equations or tables as I could find no
adaquate description of either; I don't think that it would be very
hard. <br>
&lt;&lt;citation end</p>
<p>Available on CTAN sites, dir .../support/rtf2tex </p>
<p>b) Based on these two, Erwin Wechtl wrote the rtf2LaTeX
converter. <br>
Last revision date: Aug. 1993 </p>
<p>He comments on this as follows (README-file): <br>
citation begin&gt;&gt; <br>
<strong>rtf2LaTeX</strong> is a filter built on Paul
DuBois' RTF reader that converts RTF (Microsoft's Rich Text Format)
into LaTeX. rtf2LaTeX expends a good deal of effort in an attempt to
make the resulting LaTeX maintainable and modifiable. <br>
&lt;&lt;citation end</p>
<p>At the moment converts text elements, but no formulas and no
graphics. <br>
C-source and an executable for MSDOS are available on CTAN sites,
dir .../support/rtf2latex </p>
<p>c) In 1999, Ujwal Sathyam took Paul Dubois' rtf reader source 
and adapted it to handle later versions of rtf. 
To distinguish this branch from the others, it was named 
<strong>rtf2latex2e</strong>.<br>
In 2000, Steve Swanson from Mackichan Software
(http://www.mackichan.com, makers of Scientific Word and Workplace)
added the capability to convert Equation Editor and MathType objects.<br>
In the further course of development, many more features were added,
e.g. the capability to convert several types of embedded graphics.<br>
Release 1.0fc2 was finished in May 2001 and remained as such until 2010.</p>
<p>In Dec. 2010, Scott Prahl resumed development on rtf2latex2e, 
resulting in a first 2.0 release in Jan 2011.</p>
<p>Available on CTAN sites, dir .../support/rtf2latex2e </p>
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