Hi everyone, So I've been studying the converter scheme in pursuit of the aforementioned project suggestion. I've been mostly focusing on the particular changes mentioned in the explanation on the wiki page; that is, to consolidate output formats under one extension type but use qualifiers to distinguish output format variants from one another, and to also refactor the converter code to handle latex flavors more elegantly. I suppose my first question to you all is whether there are any alternative suggestions or additional goals out there for overhauling the converter scheme.
I've also been studying the source code, gathering ideas on how the overhaul might be implemented. As far as consolidating "variant" output formats, I suspect that for the most part the actual conversion code will remain the same, but a.) functionality for parsing and recognizing qualifiers will need to be added, and b.) the path-finding algorithm for finding the shortest chain will probably need to be somewhat modified to first search for output formats with the desired qualifier and then search for the generalized output format. I also suspect that the path-finding algorithm will be further complicated by the presence of multiple flags; for example, I have noticed that pdf7 (PDF cropped) is not labeled as a vector graphics format whereas other pdf variants are, so if the pdf extension is to be consolidated I suspect that vector graphics format will also have to become a qualifier of some sort. In that sense, there may need to be some judgement on which converter chain to use if, for example, the search only results in two valid paths, one with qualifier A but not B, and another with qualifier B but not A. All said and done though I'm not an expert on the converters, so perhaps someone could shed some light on other considerations or critique my analysis of the task at hand. As for dealing with the latex flavors, within the context of the converter it seems they aren't used for much aside from generating log and aux files--in fact, unless I missed something, the different flavors only differ from one another by which program they use to generate those files, and the current code seems to determine that program solely from the command associated with the converter anyway. My gut instinct says to just have a general "latex" flag set for each of these formats and automatically determine the proper program to call from there without knowing what specific type of latex it is, but since I'm not that experienced with latex or any of its flavors I'm not sure if that's the right approach. Again perhaps someone could shed more light on this subject for me, or make sure my thinking isn't totally off track. Finally after all of those changes are in place there would probably need to be some UI changes to reflect the modified converter scheme, but I think that's more of an afterthought. Thanks for reading all of that and I appreciate any advice you have to spare. Roy Xia
