Preservation of TeX/LaTeX Documents

Abstract

I will address the following questions in this report: 1. Is TeX/LaTeX an adequate long-term preservation format? 2. Is there a viable process for converting TeX/LaTeX into DocBook XML + MathML? 3. How good is the support for MathML (for rendering to the screen by web browsers, and for rendering to PDF by XSL-FO processors)? I will also cover some other related issues, including the possibility of outsourcing preservation of TeX/LaTeX documents to existing archives like arXiv[13], and using the TeX typsetting engine to produce good quality PDF renditions of XML documents, including those with mathematical content in the form of embedded MathML. I will finish with some recommendations. Show more