Limitations of the current LaTeX converters

Limitations of the TeXmacs to LaTeX converter

Some of the TeXmacs primitives have no analogues in LaTeX. When converting such primitives from TeXmacs into LaTeX, they will usually be either ignored or replaced by an approximative translation. A (probably incomplete) list of TeXmacs features with no LaTeX counterparts is as follows:

• Left primes.
• Big separators between big parentheses.
• Trees.
• Certain features of tables (background color, cell span, vertical alignment, etc.).
• Complex user macros.
• Vertical spaces “before” and “after”.
• Indentation flags “before” and “after”.
• Most types of interactive content: hyperlinks, actions, sessions, tags for the presentation mode, animations and sounds, etc.

In addition, several issues are only partially implemented:

• Non standard fonts.
• Certain table properties
• Style parameters.

Of course, there are also differences between the typesetting algorithms used by TeXmacs and TeX/LaTeX, so the TeXmacs to LaTeX is not intended to be wysiwyg.

Limitations of the LaTeX to TeXmacs converter

As explained in the introduction, the conversion of LaTeX documents into TeXmacs is more problematic than conversions the other way around. Only a subset of LaTeX can be converted to TeXmacs in a fully reliable way. This subset comprises virtually all common constructs, including macro definitions and the additional macros uses by the TeXmacs to LaTeX converter. However, the converter has no knowledge about style parameters. In particular, it cannot be used for the conversion of LaTeX style files.