There always seems to be a nagging need to be able to translate between different application file formats.
The problem is that many of these file formats are incredibly complex. I recently had the humbling experience of reviewing the definitions of MS Word 97 and RTF formats. My idea was that it couldn't be so hard to write code to read or write these formats. My hopes were dashed pretty quickly!
Here is an assortment of converters I have wished for recently
LaTeX to RTF: A C version exists, but it hasn't worked for me yet. (Gives me nonsense RTF.) I think it requires considerable amounts of customization.
LaTeX to Word 95/97: Haven't found one that seems worth the effort.
VRML to Encapsulated PostScript (EPS): We use Pro/Engineer, which generates pretty good VRML. The idea is to select your view, then generate a "still" for technical publication (preferably in B&W vector line art format). The viewers I have seen will dump various raster formats, but there is no logical reason why a vector projection to the screen can't also be mapped to PostScript.
IGES to EPS. (BTW, an IGES reader/checker/viewer would be very handy for troubleshooting this error-prone format. A couple of commercial viewers exist, but they are expensive and don't make EPS.)
Mathcad to LaTeX. The problem here is updating engineering reports with new data and re-evaluating all the formulas. Mathcad is good at dynamically updating the math, but crappy at typesetting and page layout; LaTeX is the opposite. How to get the benefits of both?
If anyone has code (or pointers thereto), I would like to know about it. I also would be interested in knowing if any of the above-mentioned conversion tools would be of interest to any of you. If there were some demand, I might be persuaded to go to work on one of them.
