Re: [Docutils-users] Alternatives for reST -> PDF

[G. M. <mi...@if...>]

On 28.03.06, Ben Finney wrote:
> Howdy all,
> 
> reStructuredText is wonderful; a simple, unambiguous, unobtrusive
> markup that gives a lot of expressive power.
> 
> Conversion to XHTML or XML is simple. Conversion to PDF isn't so great.
> 
> That's because (La)TeX is *not* simple, nor unobtrusive. It refuses to
> work as a simple pipeline. It sprays files I don't care about all over
> the directory. It requires running multiple times to get a single
> result. It fails to deal with the Unicode character set cleanly. And
> so on.

The task of converting RsT to PDF is more complex, so is the tool. To be
simple, you would need a wrapper around the pdflatex command that does
the housekeeping. (Set up a temp-dir, Do Unicode conversion, Re-run until
ready, remove aux files). For example LyX has such scripts and you can
convert to PDF with a single button press (if all goes well). 

It should be possible to write a similar script for rst2pdf that would
fit nicely into the rst2html, rst2latex, ... family.

The price you have to pay comes when something does not go well. Finding
an error out of the (then normally hidden and) sometimes cryptic messages
and fixing might prove a challenge.
 
> What alternatives are there? Can I render from reST to PDF via some
> other, more reliable route, avoiding (La)TeX and all its annoyances?

If you care for best layout quality, LaTeX might still be the ultimative
choice. 

If your demands are more limited, you might try the way via Html. Either
print from your browser, or try html2ps and ps2pdf.

Guenter

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