writing html documents

Wed Apr 13 08:26:03 PDT 1994

This may be well-known or irrelevant but there is a package, largely a perl
script, for converting a latex document into an html document.  Many of us
have to use latex anyway so this would be a quick route to html.  It can be
obtained via ftp from  ftp.cis.ufl.edu  as /pub/perl/scripts/latex2html-
0.5.2.tar.gz.  It was clearly written with the XWindows user in mind, but the
dependence may not be serious.  I've included the README below.

Steve

____________________________________
Steven Buechler
Department of Mathematics
Mail Distribution Center
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN 46556

(219)631-6233         Internet: steve at tarski.math.nd.edu

NeXTmail accepted
________________________________________

LaTeX2HTML Version 0.5.2: README

Overview
********

The translator:

 o breaks up a document into one or more components as specified by
   the user,
 o provides optional iconic navigation panels on every page which
   contain links to other parts of the document,
 o handles inlined equations, right-justified
   numbered equations, tables, or figures and any arbitrary environment,
 o can produce output suitable for browsers that support inlined images
   or character based browsers (as specified by the user),
 o handles definitions of new commands, environments, and theorems
   even when these are defined in external style files,
 o handles footnotes, tables of contents, lists of figures and tables,
   bibliographies, and can generate an  index,
 o translates cross-references into hyperlinks and extends the
   LaTeX cross-referencing mechanism to work not just
   within a document but between documents which may reside in
   remote locations,
 o translates accent and special character
   commands to the equivalent ISO-LATIN-1
   character set where possible,
 o recognizes hypertext links (to multimedia resources or arbitrary
   internet services such as sound/video/ftp/http/news) and links which
   invoke arbitrary program scripts, all expressed as
   LaTeX commands,
 o recognizes conditional text which is intended only for the hypertext
   version, or only for the paper (DVI) version,
 o can include raw HTML in a LaTeX document (e.g. in order to specify
   interactive forms),
 o can deal sensibly at least with the Common LaTeX
   commands summarized at the back of the LaTeX blue
   book [1],
 o will try and translate any document with embedded
   LaTeX commands irrespective of whether it is
   complete or syntactically legal.

User Manual
***********

The latex2html program includes its own manual page.
The manual page can be viewed by saying %nroff -man latex2html .

See the online documentation or the <latex2htmldir>/doc/latex2html.ps
file for more information and examples.

Installing LaTeX2HTML
*********************

To install LaTeX2HTML you MUST do the following:

 1. Specify where Perl is on your system.
   In each of the files latex2html, texexpand and
   install-test, modify the second line according to where Perl is
   on your system. If you have Perl installed as a shell you can replace
   the first three lines in each file with #!<perl-directory>/perl.

 2. Specify where the external programs are on your system.
   In the file latex2html.config give the correct pathnames for
   some directories (the latex2html directory and the pbmplus)
   and some executables ( latex, dvips, gs). Note that it is
   possible to use LaTeX2HTML even if you don't have some of the
   external programs While you're at it you may want to change some of
   the default options in the same file.

 3. Run install-test.
   This Perl script will make some changes in latextohtml and then
   check whether the pathnames that should be specified during the
   previous step are correct.

This is enough for the main installation but you may also
want to do some of the following:

 o To use of the new LaTeX commands in html.sty:
   Make sure that LaTeX knows where the html.sty file is,
   either by putting it in the same place as the other style files on your
   system, or by changing your TEXINPUTS shell environment variable.

 o To set up a different initialization file for each user:
   Copy the file dot.latex2html-init in the home directory of
   any user that wants it, modify it according to her preferences and
   rename it as .latex2html-init. At runtime, both the
   latex2html.config file and $HOME/.latex2html-init
   file will be loaded, but the latter will take precedence.

 o To make your own local copies of the LaTeX2HTML icons:
   Please copy the icons subdirectory to a place under your WWW tree
   where they can be served by your server. Then modify the value of
   the $ICONSERVER variable in latex2html.config
   accordingly.

   Warning: If you cannot do that bear in mind that these icons will have
   to travel from Leeds !!! Also, your documents will depend on our
   server being operational in the first place.

Requirements
============

 The translator makes use of several programs and libraries depending on the
kind of translation it is asked to perform. All the software you might need is
freely available.

 1. LaTeX commands but without equations, figures, tables, etc.
    o Perl (version 4.0 - RCSfile: perl.c,v - Revision: 4.0.1.8 -
      Date: 1993/02/05 19:39:30 - Patch level: 36)

      Warning: You really DO need Perl at patch level 36

 2. LaTeX commands with equations, figures, tables,  etc.
   As avove plus
    o latex,
    o dvips (version 5.516 or later),

    Warning: You really DO need dvips version 5.516

    o gs (Ghostscript version 2.6.1).
    o The pbmplus library (distribution of 22nov89 or later). From
      this, the utilities pnmcrop, pbmtoxbm, ppmtogif are used
      during the postscript to XBM/GIF conversion.

 3. Right justified equations
   As above plus the following pbmplus utilities: xbmtopbm,
   pnmfile, pnmtile, and pnmcat.

Because by default the translator makes use of inlined images in the final
HTML output, it would be better to have a viewer which supports the
<IMG> tag, such as NCSA Mosaic. If only a character based browser is
available or if you want the generated documents to be more portable then
the translator can be used with the -ascii_mode option.

If ghostscipt or the pbmplus library are not available it is still possible
to use the translator with the -nolatex option.

If you intend to use any of the special features of the translator
then you have to include the html.sty file in any LaTeX
documents that use them.

[1] Leslie Lamport.  LATEX User's Guide & Reference Manual.
    Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc., 1986.

Nikos Drakos <nikos at cbl.leeds.ac.uk>
Computer Based Learning Unit
University of Leeds.