On 2009-02-05, Rainer M Krug wrote:
> the options of editing via PDFs and conversion from and to rtf, should
> be explored further as they really would solve the problem.
The problem here is, that PDF and rtf do not provide semantic markup so
most of the document structure and other vital information is
irrevesibly lost.
This means the scenario:
LyX-file -> PDF/rtf-file -> Edit -> reconvert to LyX-file
is impossible.
OTOH, LaTeX and HTML
* support semantic markup,
* are widely known and used,
* can be converted to and from a wide range of other formats by existing
third party tools (with limitations, though),
While HTML has wider prevalence, LaTeX supports more features an is
closer to the docuement model used in LyX.
In my view, to use LaTeX as exchange format,
LyX development should
a) concentrate on an improved
LyX -> LaTeX -> LyX
cycle (with the aim to get this round-trip lossless) and
b) encourage development/improvement of LaTeX converters (to/from
OOffice, HTML, reStructuredText) that emphasise preserving the
semantic over visual appearance.
c) optimise the LaTeX import from these converters.
Using HTML as exchange format would require similar efforts
a) use/improvement/development of HTML<->* converters that preserve
the semantic information and leave the "presentational" layout
completely to CSS.
b) a common extension method to represent semantic information that has no
direct counterpart in HTML.
> I still consider the via comments in pdfs together with syncTeX as the
> easiest to include. Also, with syncTeX, it should be possible to
> import the comments as notes in the original LyX document (at the
> right position) - stated from somebody who does not know anything
> about the inner workings of LaTeX and pdfs.
In principle, something like
LyX-file -> PDF/rtf-file -> Annote -> import annotations into LyX-file
should be possible. But I cannot say how much work this is and whether or
when it could be done.
Günter
