Found on xmlhack. TeXML, an xml vocabulary + conversion program that creates TeX (or LaTeX). This intermediary xml format is handier than creating the LaTeX directly by hand, as the convertor handles special characters correctly.

The chapters of my PhD thesis are all in word (as that's the only thing my professor can handle). I'm doing the editing in openoffice on my (linux) end. Somewhere in the next weeks I'll try to automate things a bit:

• Automatically convert word to openoffice using openoffice's api.
• Extract the pictures and the xml-formatted text form openoffice's file format (which is a zip file).
• Convert the xml text to latex using above set of tools.

That should give me a nicely formatted LaTeX dissertation without the word-induced formatting headaches. Perferrably I'd be able to go from latex back to word, allowing myself to edit plain latex while generating word documents for my professor :-)

We'll see!