It is possible to translate LATEX file into other formats than html. There are two such formats: plain text and info files. This enables producing postscript, html, plain text and info manuals from one (LATEX) input file.
The LATEX file is processed and converted into a plain text formatted file. It allows some pretty-printing in plain text.
To translate into text, invoke HEVEA as follow:
# hevea -text [-w <width>] myfile.tex
Then, HEVEA produces myfiles.txt a plain text translation of myfile.tex.
Additionally, the optional argument -w <number> sets the width of the output for text formatting. By default, The text will be 72 characters wide.
Nearly every environment has been translated, included lists and tables. The support is nearly the same as in html, excepted in some cases described hereafter.
Most style changes are ignored, because it is hardly possible to render them in plain text. Thus, there are no italics, bold fonts, underlinings, nor size change or colours… The only exception is for the verbatim environment that puts the text inside quotes, to distinguish it more easily.
Tables with borders are rendered in the same spirit as in LATEX. Thus for instance, it is possible to get vertical lines between some columns only. Table rendering can be poor in case of line overflow. The only way to correct this (apart from changing the tables themselves) is to adjust the formatting width, using the the -w command-line option.
For now, maths are not supported at all in text mode. You can get very weird
results with in-text mathematical formulas.
Of course, simple expressions such as subscripts remains readable.
For instance, x2 will be rendered as x^2, but ∫01f(x)dx will
yield something like : int01f(x)dx.
The file format info is also supported. Info files are text files with limited hypertext links, they can be read by using emacs info mode or the info program. Please note that HEVEA translates plain LATEX to info, and not TeXinfo.
You can translate your LATEX files into info file(s) as follows:
# hevea -info [-w <width>] myfile.tex
Then, HEVEA produces the file myfile.info, an info translation of myfile.tex. However, if the resulting file is too large, it is cut into pieces automatically, and myinfo.info now contains references for all the nodes in the others files, which are named myfile.info-1, myfile.info-2,…
The optional argument -w has the same meaning as for text output.
The text will be organised in nodes that follow the pattern of LATEX sectioning commands. Menus are created to navigate through the sections easily
A table of content is produced automatically. References, indexes and footnotes are supported, as they are in html mode. However, the info format only allows pointers to info nodes, i.e. in HEVEA case, to sectional units. As a consequence all cross references lead to sectional unit headers.