[texhax] AMSTeX documents to LaTEX

[Art Werschulz]

Hi.

> do you know if there is a program to convert AMSTeX documents to Latex?

Much of the AmSTeX functionality is provided by the various ams*
packages for LaTeX (amsmath, amssymb, etc.).

The bibliographic stuff can be handled by my ams2bib Perl script,
which can be found on CTAN.  From the README file:

%<------%<--%<--%<---cut here---%<--%<--%<----------------------------

Using ams2bib is very simple:  If you have a file "foo.tex" consisting
of AmSTeX bibliographic references, the command "ams2bib foo" produces
a file "foo.bib" containing the translations of these references into
BibTeX.  Keys are automatically generated, based on the authors' names
and yuear of publication.

Note: AmSTeX does not support the wide variety of reference types that
BibTeX does.  For example, the only way to indicate a technical report
in AmSTeX is to use the \paper reference, with the \paperinfo field
giving the technical report information.  Hence, a tool such as
ams2bib would be hard-pressed to produce a @TechReport bibliographic
entry.  Indeed, ams2bib only produces @Article, @Book, and @InBook
entries.  This means that it may be necessary to hand-edit the
resulting BibTeX file, looking for these kinds of corrections.

%<------%<--%<--%<---cut here---%<--%<--%<----------------------------

At this point, some things still need to be changed by hand, e.g.,
\abstract and \endabstract would need to be changed to
\begin{abstract} and \end{abstract}.  If there's a big demand for
same, I could write a Perl script to do this.

-- 
Art Werschulz (8-{)}   "Metaphors be with you."  -- bumper sticker
GCS/M (GAT): d? -p+ c++ l u+(-) e--- m* s n+ h f g+ w+ t++ r- y? 
Internet: agw at cs.columbia.edu<a href="http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~agw/">WWW</a>
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