oo2text and text2tex - A barebone Markdown to TeX/LaTeX converter kit via OmniOutliner

(including OmniOutliner v3/v5 file to text script)

WARNING: Current version has minor bug with v5 format. Some of the text does not output correctly. (Trying to figure out how to handle XML node with attribute rank="") Stay with v3 format if possible.

Purpose/Motivation

When creating structured document, I want to use outline processor. For the output, I want to use TeX for best result. This usually achieved by some integrated environment like Scrivener.

For writing a simple text, OmniOutliner is very well. There is no simple way to convert the document file into TeX, and also cumbersome to save, convert to TeX, convert to PDF, and preview.

To achieve this, I implemented a script oo2tex. It was developed and used it for several years. I also used it to write my Ph.D. dissertation (180 pages -- the use of outline processor helped a lot to achieve this.)

While I'm reviewing how I can improve the oo2tex, I realized it is too complex and not easy to maintain. So I created simpler version which achieve similar result. So these scripts.

Scripts

Using following two scripts convert Markdown formatted (outlined) OmniOutliner file into TeX file.

• md2tex convert slightly extended Markdown text file into TeX. The extension described in Format.md

• oo2text extract OmniOutliner v3(.oo3) or v5(.ooutline) file as text file. (Note: v3 format described as DTD, v5 format described as RelaxNG in outline and editor separately)

• ja-ten-maru-normalize is a utility script to normalize Japanse multibyte comma and periods.

Requirements

Ruby 1.9 and gems:

• Redcarpet

• nokogiri and zlib for OmniOutliner file handling

• rubyzip for v5 format support

Typical usage

Extract text contents of *.oo3 into a file as Markdown text using oo2text, then convert the Markdown file into TeX file using md2tex. Use the output as body of TeX text

From Makefile in sample directory:

# Sample Makefile
.SUFFIXES: .md .tex

.md.tex:; ../bin/md2tex $< > $@

sample.pdf: sample.tex
        latex sample
        dvipdfmx sample

sample-md.tex: sample-md.md

sample.tex: sample-md.tex preamble.tex trailer.tex
        (cat preamble.tex sample-md.tex trailer.tex) > sample.tex

sample-md.md: sample.oo3/contents.xml
        ../bin/oo2text sample.oo3 > sample-md.md

clean::
        rm -f sample.log sample.aux sample.pdf sample-md.md sample-md.tex sample.dvi

You can automate whole PDF generation process on save of OmniOutliner, by using watchr script like the one in tools directory.

Macro substitutions

To embed some of build time information onto the file, following macros are defined to use:

• _OO2_RUN_STAMP__

  Simple timestamp by date

• __OO2_GIT_DESCRIBE__

  Output of git describe. If no meaningful tags are defined, git will emit error.

• __OO2_GIT_STATUS__

  Output of tweaked git status

• __OO2_GIT_STATUS_LONG__

  Output of tweaked git status in long format with full-length hash of last commit

• __OO2_GIT_HASH_LONG__

  Value of full-length hash for last commit

License

Copyright (c)2012,2017,2021 Shigeya Suzuki

Permission to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute this software for any
purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above
copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES
WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR
ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES
WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN
ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF
OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.