[Tex/LaTex] pandoc tex to docx with biblatex

biblatex-chicagolatex-to-wordmswordpandoc

I'm looking for a relatively easy converter for tex to docx format (unfortunately I have a supervisor who insists on a word version).

I can get a fairly decent conversion using pandoc
pandoc --bibliography references.bib --csl=chicago-note-bibliography.csl -o OUT.docx IN.tex, however, I notice it ignores commands like \citetitle and \citeauthor. This makes the word version look like it is full of typos.

Is there a way to use native biblatex with pandoc so that commands are interpreted properly using the style defined in the document? Alternatively, is there a better tool for creating word documents from tex? I don't care how ugly it looks as it is just for my supervisor. As long as the typos are mine and not the converters I am happy.

Best Answer

Pandoc supports only a subset of biblatex cite commands (this is a known issue, cf. https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/issues/2335).

supported:

\autocite
\autocite*
\cite
\parencite
\Parencite
\footcite
\footcitetext
\textcite
\Textcite
\smartcite
\Smartcite
\citeyear

unsupported:

\Cite
\fullcite
\footfullcite
\Citeauthor
\citetitle

How the output is rendered depends on the csl file you are using.

There are two general approaches how you can solve your problem:

Rewrite all unsupported citations using the supported commands and/or manual additions.
Leave everything as it is and convert the PDF to DOCX which can be done with Adobe Acrobat, Abiword, LibreOffice, and OpenOffice.

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] TeX4ht (htlatex) on MiKTeX 2.9 to convert LaTeX into MathML, and then into Office MathML with Word 2010

I had success at opening your document with Word 2010. First of all, I converted document to odt format. Because you don't have mk4ht command available, you need to use following htlatex call:

htlatex test.tex "xhtml,ooffice" "ooffice/! -cmozhtf" "-cooxtpipes -coo"

all these parameters are necessary, they are used in postprocessing of the xml file with document.

When I tried to open resulting document with Word 2010, only crossed gray boxes were shown in the place of math. Then I tried to open and then save test.odt with OpenOffice (3.2) and LibreOffice (3.6). In both cases, saved file was much almost twice as big. Document saved in OpenOffice was opened without problems in Word, document saved in LibreOffice reported incorrect content, but then Word asked if I want to repair it and then opened it correctly as well.

I took a look at odt files saved from Open/LibreOfficess and it seems that math was extracted from the main document and it each math fragment was saved in standalone file with some additional metadata. While Open/LibreOffice is fine with odt files produced by tex4ht, word obviously isn't and its odt support needs to have math in particular format. I don't know whether this behaviour shows also current Word version and it is probably a bug in odt support in Word, but I don't know odt standard well enough to judge that. If your Word doesn't support math in odt files produced by tex4ht try to open and save it with OpenOffice.

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[Tex/LaTex] TeX to DOCX via Pandoc with ACM template

Pandoc cannot use a template provided as a *.csl file to style its DOCX output.

If you want to get Pandoc using a specific set of styles, you need to create (or grab) another DOCX file containing these styles. Note, that the style names do need to conform to the standard names in the first place. (In the past I've succeeded to let it use non-standard style names in cases where one of the standard styles is set up to enforce another style, f.e. in "next paragraph"..).

The commandline option to add is --reference-docx=...

Also, be sure to use the very latest version of Pandoc. Its support for DOCX is very new, and evolving still very rapidly.

The command for Pandoc would be:

  pandoc sig-alternate.tex                \
       --from=latex                       \
       --to=docx                          \
       --biblatex                         \
       --bibliography sigproc.bib         \
       --output=sig-alternate.docx        \
       --reference-docx=my-reference.docx

One other hint: if the direct conversion is not satisfying you (there may be spots where the thing doesn't look right), you should proceed like this:

Convert the LaTeX to Markdown first (also with the help of Pandoc).
Edit the resulting Markdown (consult man pandoc_markdown and man pandoc to see what special options and extensions Pandoc supports).
Convert the improved Markdown sources to DOCX (don't forget to use --reference-docx=...)

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] TeX4ht (htlatex) on MiKTeX 2.9 to convert LaTeX into MathML, and then into Office MathML with Word 2010

[Tex/LaTex] TeX to DOCX via Pandoc with ACM template

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