DOCBOOK-APPS: LaTeX equation as figure in DocBook XML

["Paul A. Hoadley" <paulh at logicsquad dot net>]

Hello,

I want to include some equations as figures in a DocBook document.
>From my research I gather there are several ways to solve this
problem, but I am constrained by wanting to use XML source, then via
XSL-FO to PDF with XEP, so this rules out any use of TeX within the
toolchain itself.

I am reasonably happy with using PNG as the image format (XEP seemed
to _almost_ accept EPSI, but there was no output) but my initial
experiments have produced mediocre results.  I have tried:

LaTeX -> DVI (with LaTeX, using \pagestyle{empty})
DVI -> PS (with dvips)
PS -> PNM (with convert)
PNM -> PNM (with pnmcrop to get the equation alone)
PNM -> PNG (with pnmtopng)

The image quality is mediocre, and too small.  There would seem to be
a number of points in the chain where I could try to increase the
image size, and I will go on to try GIF as a format to see if the
resulting bitmap is better.

I have a feeling others may have previously invented this wheel --
what do people recommend in this setting?


-- 
Paul.

mailto:paulh@logicsquad.net
mailto:paul.hoadley@student.adelaide.edu.au