I know many of you will think this elementary – but I would like opinions. I need to know if I'm doing it horribly wrong before I continue doing 45+ chapters! I apologize if this isn't the proper place – but I'm really trying to learn!
I'm trying to convert a novel that has been typed in Word — no equations — just text with some light formatting, lots of dialogue etc…. So in my VERY limited knowledge of LaTeX I have done this. Can you please tell me if I'm on the right track?
My method:
- Open Chapter in Open Office
- Export using
Writer2LaTeX
extension - Open the exported file in
WinEdt
- Delete all preamble coding and just have
\chapter{}
for the preamble - Delete
\end{document}
from the end of the document - Replace
{\textquoteright}
with'
(it puts this on all conjunctions and just for neatness and readability I'd rather just see the'
than the code) - Save
In my master
document I insert the chapters using the \include
command (at the suggestion of someone here)
So…. I know it seems like it's a very round about way of doing it… but is it okay? My reasoning for using Writer2LaTeX
extension is because it seems to take care of the opening and closing quotations using {\textquotedblleft}
and {\textquotedblright}
and it also uses \textit
for italics. Otherwise I think I'd have to go find all those and enter coding by hand correct?
My master
file has the following code:
\documentclass[10pt]{memoir}
\usepackage{mathpazo}
\usepackage[margin=1in, paperwidth=6in, paperheight=9in]{geometry}
\usepackage{indentfirst}
\pagestyle{plain}
\emergencystretch=1.5em
\renewcommand*{\chapnamefont}{\normalfont\HUGE\bfseries\sffamily}
\renewcommand*{\chapnumfont}{\normalfont\HUGE\bfseries\sffamily}
\renewcommand*{\afterchapternum}{}
\renewcommand*{\printchaptertitle}[1]{}
\begin{document}
\include{Chapter1v2}
\include{chapter02}
\end{document}
Best Answer
From Word to LaTeX via
Writer2LaTeX
I will not repeat the manual of Writer2LaTeX, which you should read. But after some years I've got some practical experience:
\foreignlanguage
-commands or similiar.\begin{document}
indicates that something is going wrong.\\ \\ \\
, this is a very good moment to learn a bit about "regular expressions". Doing deletions and changes manually, especially with 45 chapters, will probably take much longer than learning regexp.Often it is faster to learn something about LaTeX by reading an introduction and the manual of a package (you get the manual by typing
texdoc packagename
on the command line), than wildly guessing how something could work.