[texhax] (no subject)

[Pierre MacKay]

Izzie Weinzweig wrote:

> How can you convert a pdf file or a tiff file to a LaTeX file?
>
> Prof. A.I. Weinzweig

The only general approach is to extract the raw text (a built in in 
capacity in some PDFs, a job for optical character recognition in TIFF) 
and then insert the necessary LaTeX commands.  PDF has almost no concept 
of logical structure, and TIFF has none at all.  Logical structure is 
something you have to apply yourself if you start with the absence of 
logical structure.  I suppose you could derive paragraphs, headers, 
quotation and annotation blocks from the appearance of a PDF by some 
fairly shaky heuristics, but I wouldn't want to count on it.  Even RTF, 
even it its present bloated and top-heavy form gives you a better start. 

Pierre MacKay