RapidTeX 0.3 review

RapidTeX is a LaTeX preprocessor that allows users to write more intuitive source files more easily. Installation: The installa

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 0K Developer: Maarten van Gompel

0

RapidTeX is a LaTeX preprocessor that allows users to write more intuitive source files more easily.

Installation:

The installation script install.sh will take care of installing RapidTeX in /usr/local/bin. userinstall.sh should be executed by every user that wants to use rapidtex so that the necessary files are copied to the directory .rapidtex in his home directory.

For those not wanting to use the install scripts, this is the manual procedure:

Put the files rapidtex, htmlimage.sh and rptex2* anywhere in your path and make sure the first line of rapidtex refers to the correct path to your python interpreter. Then copy .rptex and .tex to a new directory .rapidtex/ in your home directory.

Usage:

There are scripts who will take care of the build process for you, those scripts are called rptex2pdf, rptex2ps and rptex2html. All make use of a temporary directory /tmp/rapidtex/ which will be automatically created.

We will discuss the usage of each script:

The command rptex2pdf document reads document.rptex (note that the extension is not specified on the commandline!) and produces document.pdf. This script requires pdflatex and will automatically display the resulting file in gv.

The command rptex2ps document reads document.rptex (note that the extension is not specified on the commandline!) and produces document.ps. This script requires latex and will automatically display the resulting file in gv.

The command rptex2html document reads document.rptex (note that the extension is not specified on the commandline!) and produces document.html. The script will automatically display the resulting file in mozilla.

Of course, you can also decide not to use these easy build scripts and go through it all manually.

If you issue the command rapidtex yourdocument.rptex you will get your file converted to LaTeX formatting, output will be directed to stdout by default. You can of course direct output to a TeX file and run it through LaTeX with a command like the following:

rapidtex yourdocument.rptex > yourdocument.tex; latex yourdocument.tex; xdvi yourdocument.dvi

If you want to output to HTML, then you can use a command similar to the following:

rapidtex yourdocument.rptex html > yourdocument.html

The RapidTeX (pre)processor can be enabled and disabled for certain parts of the source file, write on a single line to disable the preprocessor, and write to enable it again. By default, it is enabled immediately.