[jazzplusplus-devel] Tex2RTF for online documentation building

[Pete S. <pst...@gm...>]

In a separate thread (Subject: online help build system update) I 
mention the use of tex2rtf to generate HTML help.

"For the HTML help you will need the tex2rtf code that is provided with 
wxWidgets."

I have a bit of a history with tex2rtf, and I felt this history, and its 
relationship to Jazz++ development, was worth a separate topic.  In the 
old thread, Donald B. Moore wrote...

DM> In your previous posting about this, you signified
DM> that the 'tex2rtf' utility was distributed with the
DM> wxwidget tarball. My stock installation of wx is
DM> version 2.8.4, however 'tex2rtf' wasn't in $PATH.
DM> I'd only just updated wx a week or so ago, so I
DM> still had the source/build tree handy. Checking
DM> that was when I discovered 'tex'2rtf' hadn't been
DM> built (in my 2.8.4 wx tree) - nor had it been
DM> built in the non-stock wx-2.8.7 build used for
DM> jazz++ ; apparently the cause is common.
DM>
DM> I chose to sort this on my *stock* wx installation
DM> (to make tex2rtf available systemwide, not just for
DM> jazz++). The full path to tex2rtf in the wx source
DM> tree is -- wxGTK-2.8.4/utils/tex2rtf/
DM>
DM> Changing to that directory, issuing make && make
DM> install was how I ended up with a working tex2rtf.
DM> Strangely, it had all been previously configured,
DM> all the Makefiles were present, but for whatever
DM> reason the build process skips right over the utils
DM> section and why is something I would need look closer
DM> at ....if you want me to that is. Let me know...

You correctly surmised that a tex2rtf binary is not included with a 
wxWidgets distribution.  It is considered a utility that is not required 
to use wxWidgets.  It was used to generate the documentation for 
wxWidgets itself, but I believe that will not be the case for future 
versions (2.9.* and 3.*) of wxWidgets.

It was lucky for you that you attempted to build tex2rtf from a stock 
build.  Given the options we use to build wxWidgets for use with Jazz++, 
you would have run into trouble with the non-stock build of tex2rtf.  We 
use the stl in our wxWidgets build, and tex2rtf is not compatible with 
the stl build of wxWidgets.

I have created a patched tex2rtf, that does build with our wxWidgets 
options.  I submitted it to the wxWidgets sourceforge patch manager 
(number 1755801) quite a while ago, but the patch caused a problem with 
the stock build.

I guess I have the following options...

1. Since wxWidgets is switching to a different documentation build 
system, I could try submitting the patch again, but the process will 
take up a lot of my Jazz++ development time.
2. I could create a fork of tex2rtf in our development tree so I could 
change it in any way I like.  This is my favorite option at this point.
3. I could make binaries available for download.  I don't like this idea 
because there might be some platforms I have difficulty generating and 
testing a binary on.

I do like tex2rtf's capabilities, and I do want to use it for online 
HTML help.  What do you all think?

Pete