(dsssl) raw text

Subject: (dsssl) raw text
From: Trent Shipley <tcshipley@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2001 23:18:51 -0700
>From time to time the question of a raw text for OpenJade comes up.  It 
occurs to me that a raw-text output directly for OpenJade might not be the 
best way to proceed.

If there were a dvi2text tool (and a cursory 'locate' on my SuSE machine did 
not find one), then it would be more widely useful and among its applications 
would be to magically allow OpenJade to be used to produce formatted raw text 
output. [1]

What would be the best option?
a) A direct to raw-text mode for OpenJade
b) A direct to raw-text mode of jadetex
c) A dvi2text step-down translator.

Is it possible to build a dvi to text engine?  (Does one exist already?)

What applications would there be for a dvi2text translator?

How hard would it be to fit jadetex with an input parameter (and code) to 
optimize for raw text [2]?  Assuming a dvi2text tool would this be desirable? 

For any of the above options how much more work would be involved to get it 
to dump in any of the following three forms?
1) ASCII
2) UTF-8
3) UTF-16

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1.  TEXT is a frequent entry for printers so it does not seem unreasonable that 
(a properly stunted) dvi file should be converted to a format suitable for a 
primitive TEXT printer.  This assumes that the DSSSL (or whatever) stylesheet 
will be aware of PostScript and Text possibilities.  A stylesheet processor 
will probably need to be handed an input parameter and the stylesheet will 
need to select options based on that value.  (Either that, or two distinct 
stylesheets could be used.)
   A larger problem for DSSSL is that the standard itself does not seem to 
have assumed that anyone would want to use the language to do something as 
uninteresting as producing formatted raw text.  For example, raw text doesn't 
know from physical medium.  It just has lines and characters.

2. Obviously, TeX optimized for formatted raw text output is preTeXt.
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