Re: Re: Alternatives for reST -> PDF

on 30.03.2006 00:18 Ben Finney said the following:
> "G. Milde" <g.milde <at> web.de> writes:
>> Wanted: Alternatives for reST -> PDF
> 
> Thanks for this collation of the options discussed so far.
> 
>> What I would like to see is a script that does the reST2PDF
>> conversion with one command, similar to rst2html or rst2latex.
> 
> Yes, that's my need as well. In my processes, LaTeX is useful only to
> the extent that it helps get to that goal.
> 
>> pdflatex
>> --------
>>
>> My first suggestion was a wrapper script around pdflatex that would
>> care for the necessary preparation, run as many times as needed and
>> clean up afterwards thus bypassing the most obvious annoyances of LaTeX.
> 
> Something that can:
> 
>   - run as a pipeline (LaTeX on stdin, PDF on stdout) by default
> 
>   - allow any specified path for input file and/or output file
> 
>   - hide all the cruft that LaTeX processing creates, leaving no extra
>     files unless asked
> 
>   - properly handle Unicode, standard fonts, standard filenames and
>     locations, and other conventions that seem poorly supported by
>     LaTeX
> 
>   - ensure that the process ends with either an unambiguous error
>     state, or a complete PDF rendering of the input
> 
> Currently pdflatex does *none* of these, and is thus a bad tool
> (largely because it fails to sufficiently abstract the underlying bad
> tools).

A number of latex distribution include a command called 'texify', at 
least miktex on windows does, I thought tetex had it too, but the 
(admittedly old) version I can see from here doesnt...

'texify --pdf --batch --clean --quiet' fulfils requirements 1, 3, and 5.

2 is trivial, I dare say.

4 is a real problem. a problem of the latex installation/configuration 
that is.
A first idea: require the 'ucs' package to be installed and put::

   \usepackage{ucs}
   \usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc} %this is an utf8 encoded file

in the preamble (with a different encoding if you want)

cheers,
stefan

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