TeX documentation

[jeshaw2]

Good!  I was looking for something else to learn... :-/

I'm sure once I get over the TEX/Latex learning curve, I'll like it.  Now, can I use TEX to publish to he EA Wiki too?  All these publishing formats are crimping my style.  

[thomaskilian]

Jim,
TeX is explicitely meant to produce high quality PAPER prints. Nothing else!

All these Word cripples are like Porsches with a tow coupling.

[mikewhit]

Cayenne ?

[Eve]

As Thomas said, TeX (including LaTeX) is intended for print.  However, that doesn't mean that it can't be used in other ways.  For example there is a converter to HTML.  (LaTeX2HTML)  I just did a google search and came up with Latex2wiki.

[thomaskilian]

Seems to be fashionable to have a tow coupling on your Porsche, doesn't it?

As TeX has a (very crude!) macro processor inside, you even can use it for manipulating your EA model - if you're crazy enough. Someone used it to create a macro set that produces Powerpoint-like presentations on PDF. Well, I refreain from commenting these things. I just use it to create PAPER for the shelf of the BOSS. It only needs to look cute (and it does!). Personally I prefer the model itself.

Edit: I should have written 911 (not so familiar with cars).

[specious]

I've done quite a bit of work with the perl Template Toolkit. Essentially, you just slurp all the things you need out of your datastore into a data structure (it masks the differences between hashes and arrays behind a simple package.element.attribute syntax), and you can just point your template at it and go. Iterate over parts of the structure as often as you want, with conditionals, filtering, loops, modular templates that can nest inside each other etc. etc. If you already have the perl addin code, it should be easy enough. The last time I tried, there was no precompiled PPM for it on the ActiveState site, but I found one in the Bugzilla bundle (on the Bugzilla site).

Alternative: There seems to be quite a bit of similarity with the code generation template language used in EA. Maybe this could be used instead to avoid the perl?

[thomaskilian]

The Perl variant is much more powerful as it can use the full range of EA's automation while the code gen is very limited. However, it should be possible to directly generate TeX with that.