Best conversion approach for PreTeXt in 2025?

[Jan Pearce]

Hello everyone,

I am interested in involving my students in a conversion of this
(https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/1355) open textbook on
security to PreTeXt for hosting on Runestone.. A bunch of years ago I
used Oscar's Pandoc converter from HTML. I see that Oscar's converter
was updated last year. Is that still the best way to go? Someone at a
recent drop-in mentioned David also has developed a converter.

Please note that I am not asking anyone to do this for me. (I have a
bunch of students this summer, and they need good things to do.) I am
just seeking guidance on what tool to use and what format to start
from since the textbook I want to convert comes in HTML, epub, and
pdf.

Many thanks for any guidance you can provide,
Jan

[David W. Farmer]

If your book was written in LaTeX, give me access to the source and
I'll take a look. (A GitHub repository is best, if that works for you.)

LaTeX is the only format where I can help.

Regards,

David

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "PreTeXt support" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to pretext-suppo...@googlegroups.com.
> To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pretext-support/CAHeayy%3DdrWRQSsLUFE%3D4Lz-kjFCGO6Hm%3DWFkcjS4VYvcOZXT6A%40mail.gmail.com.
>

[Sean Fitzpatrick]

I followed the UMN link, and the book already exists in HTML, PDF, and
EPUB versions.

But I do not see a link to source code anywhere.

Jan, have you contacted the author?

[Oscar Levin]

1. The pandoc to pretext converter is likely still the best bet for trying to convert something from HTML, but I really have no idea how effective it would be. While there were a few minor updates a year ago, the tool really needs more work if it is going to be useful.
2. 
   
3. You might also consider converting to markdown using Pandoc, and then converting snippets of markdown to PreTeXt using the pretext-tools extension. That has seen more work recently, and we are about to release some major improvements.
4. 
   
5. I also strongly recommend contacting the author to see if they have source files in some other format. Plus, they might have already started writing in PreTeXt for all you know. And authors always like getting contacted by people interested in their projects anyway.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pretext-support/31333890-3d0a-466f-9472-4b80a12d4bb4%40gmail.com.