mgkuhn / latex2html

Converts LaTeX documents to HTML

LaTeX2HTML README

Contents

• Overview
• Pointers to the User Manual
• Requirements
• Installation
• Troubleshooting
• Support and More Information

Overview

The LaTeX2HTML translator:

• breaks up a document into one or more components as specified by the user,
• provides optional iconic navigation panels on every page which contain links to other parts of the document,
• handles inlined equations, right-justified numbered equations, tables, or figures and any arbitrary environment,
• can produce output suitable for browsers that support inlined images or character based browsers (as specified by the user),
• handles definitions of new commands, environments, and theorems even when these are defined in external style files,
• handles footnotes, tables of contents, lists of figures and tables, bibliographies, and can generate an Index,
• 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,
• translates accent and special character commands to the equivalent ISO-LATIN-1 character set where possible,
• 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,
• recognizes conditional text which is intended only for the hypertext version, or only for the paper (DVI) version,
• can include raw HTML in a LaTeX document (e.g. in order to specify interactive forms),
• can deal sensibly with all the commands and environments commonly used with LaTeX as summarized at the back of the LaTeX blue book [1], and many of the packages described in the LaTeX Companion, and others.
• will try to translate any document with embedded LaTeX commands irrespective of whether it is complete or syntactically legal.

Pointers to the User Manual

The LaTeX2HTML program includes its own manual page. The manual page can be viewed by saying "perldoc latex2html" or "latex2html -help".

See the documentation at http://mirrors.ctan.org/support/latex2html/manual.pdf for more information and examples.

Other useful links can be found at: www.latex2html.org and at the mailing-list site: http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/latex2html

In particular see the pages: support.html , Snode1.html , Snode2.html , Snode3.html for instructions on how to install the program and make your own local copy of the manual in HTML.

Requirements

Please consult the section "Requirements" of the manual at for more information.

The requirements for using LaTeX2HTML depend on the kind of translation it is asked to perform as follows:

1. LaTeX commands but without equations, figures, tables, etc.

   • Perl 5.003 (Perl5 Patch level 3) or higher.

   • DBM or NDBM, the Unix DataBase Management system. Alternatively, Perl5's SDBM DataBase system. Do not care unless you get misconfiguration errors from LaTeX2HTML.

2. LaTeX commands with equations, figures, tables, etc. As above plus

   • latex (version 2e recommended but 2.09 acceptable),
   • dvips (version 5.516 or later) or dvipsk. Version 5.62 or higher enhances the performance of image creation with a significant speed-up. See l2conf.pm for this after you are done with the installation. Do not use the 'dvips -E' feature unless you have 5.62, else you will get broken images.
   • gs (Ghostscript version 4.03 or later), with the ppmraw device driver, or even better pnmraw. Upgrade to 5.10 or later if you want to go sure about seldom problems with 4.03 to avoid (yet unclarified).
   • The netpbm library (ftp://ftp.x.org/R5contrib/). Netpbm 1 March 1994 is recommended. Check with 'pnmcrop -version'. Some of the filters in those libraries are used during the postscript to image conversion.
   • If you want PNG images, you need pnmtopng (current version is 2.31). It is not part of netpbm and requires libpng (version 0.89c) and libz (1.0.4). pnmtopng supports transparency and interlace mode.

3. Transparent inlined GIFs If you dislike the gray background color of the generated inlined images then the best thing you can do is get the netpbm library (instead of the older pbmplus) OR install the giftrans filter by Andreas Ley [e-mail]. Version 1.10.2 is known to work without problems but later versions should also be OK.

LaTeX2HTML also supports the shareware program giftool (by Home Pages, Inc., version 1.0), too. It can also create interlaced GIFs.

Because by default the translator makes use of inlined images in the final HTML output, it would be better to have a graphical browser. 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 ghostscript or netpbm library are not available it is still possible to use the translator with the -no_images 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.

Installation

LaTeX2HTML is available through the debian, fedora, and macports package managers.

To install LaTeX2HTML from source please read the file INSTALL.

Troubleshooting

Please refer to the FAQ file that came with your distribution.

Support and More Information

A LaTeX2HTML mailing list has been set up by the TeX User Group (TUG).

To join the list, visit the web-page at:

http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/latex2html

and follow the instructions found there.

If this is not possible for some reason, then send a message to: [e-mail] with the contents subscribe

To be removed from the list follow the instructions at:

http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/latex2html

If this is not possible for some reason, then send a message to: [e-mail] with the contents unsubscribe

An archive of the mailing list, from 1999 onwards, can be browsed at:

http://tug.org/pipermail/latex2html/

License

GNU Public License Version 2

Enjoy!

Original Author: Nikos Drakos Computer Based Learning Unit University of Leeds.

Most Recent Author: Ross Moore Mathematics Department Macquarie University, Sydney.

Former Authors: Marek Rouchal Infineon Technologies AG Munich, Germany

Jens Lippmann Technische Universit"at Darmstadt.