-1

I am trying to find a way for a user to design and modify pages without requiring him to learn LaTeX. The pages have graphical elements in the form of rounded rectangles to denote regions of a page, such as a "Ship To" address, etc., and embedded graphics such as a company logo.

The reason I want to produce LaTeX output is because, once the form has been designed, I need to print it and/or produce a PDF version under program control (on a Linux box, so probably python).

I have...

  • tried the Writer2LaTeX extension for LibreOffice but it ignores "Draw" elements, which is what a rounded rectangle is
  • looked at python-docx package but that seems to be more oriented to creating and modifying a Word document rather than extracting stuff from one
  • looked at LyX but it doesn't allow me to create "Draw" objects

I should also note that I am brand-new to LaTeX so may not be aware of the full capabilities of LaTeX and the various packages available, so I am completely open to just about any other ideas.

Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.

Colin Wu
  • 99
  • 3
    Design the form in Word, and then produce a LaTeX document class based on that design once it's finalized. Trying to do this by an automatic conversion process is very unlikely to work. – Alan Munn Jun 26 '19 at 14:13
  • 1
    You could try pandoc, but like Alan I doubt that something graphical orientated will really work well. – Ulrike Fischer Jun 26 '19 at 14:14
  • A think that this question is a duplicate of this https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/27731/how-can-i-convert-from-microsoft-word-to-a-latex-document. However there is a program not-free that convert from Word to LaTeX. I don't know if I can write it here. – Sebastiano Jun 26 '19 at 14:54
  • Tried pandoc with a super simple .odt consisting of two rounded rectangles with enclosed text boxes (and text in them, of course). Got an empty \begin{document} section. :-/ – Colin Wu Jun 26 '19 at 14:58
  • @Sebastiano, can you PM me the name? Thanks. I'm open to looking at it at least. – Colin Wu Jun 26 '19 at 15:03
  • @UlrikeFischer Sorry to bother you. Can I write the name of the program I know? hi and thank you. – Sebastiano Jun 26 '19 at 15:05
  • @Sebastiano There is no prohibition on mentioning commercial software. There's a prohibition on advertising, but that's not what you would be doing. – Alan Munn Jun 26 '19 at 15:47
  • @AlanMunn Absolutely not. I mention only the program called GrindEQ. – Sebastiano Jun 26 '19 at 15:49
  • @ColinWu See the name of the software into the last my comment for AlanMunn. – Sebastiano Jun 26 '19 at 15:50
  • Thank you, everyone. I will check it out. – Colin Wu Jun 26 '19 at 20:21

2 Answers2

1

Like Ulrike said you can try Pandoc. I have used it for simple conversions, but nothing with the graphics boxes.

MrT_PHS
  • 33
0

Too graphic for a comment. Note it is possible for simple users like me to create such graphics using LyX 2.3.3 to compile the TeX without using the included python !

enter image description here

Hints for programmed TeXport can be found here Exporting single-sided from LyX and Transfer .tex file from LyX into LaTeXmk

Community
  • 1
  • Guess I had better give LyX another look. I confess my previous peek was pretty superficial. Also, the version I looked at was v 2.3.2. – Colin Wu Jun 26 '19 at 20:29
  • no it is not. I am now leaning towards writing my own translator (for the subset of ODT elements that I need) to create a template. – Colin Wu Jun 26 '19 at 23:12