Re: [Groff] eqn to MathML

[Joerg van den Hoff]

Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> doclifter has reached a point in its evolution at which the single
> new feature that would add the most value is probably the ability
> to translate eqn markup to MathML.  I have looked for programs that do
> this, and I have found no evidence that any exist.
>
> Having looked at the problem in depth, I am beginning to think that
> doclifter itself is not the right place to solve this problem.  It is
> notoriously difficult to verify that two different parsers accept the
> same input language, and I'm thinking that rather than build another
> eqn parser in Python it would be smarter to modify geqn so that it can
> emit MathML and have doclifter call geqn.
>
> Comments?  Thoughts?  Werner, if I wrote patches to do this would you
> take them?

just a comment:

I'd love to have some facility to get equations "out" of groff into some format
which would be acceptable by publishers of certain scientific journals.

most of those with which I have to deal insist on getting manuscripts as -- prepare for 
the worst -- MSWord. since I cannot bear using that crap, I write my texts with
groff and have found a way to get the results into .rtf in the end which suffices as far 
as pure text is concerned. of course one has casualties, the first of those being every 
single equation. which in the end means filling equations in again with MSWord. not nice.

I'm sure I'll not succeed in telling the publishers to accept groff as source format. but 
maybe one could make a point that accepting some kind of XML should be possible.

at least this should facility transfer to AbiWord and the like, I presume.



joerg