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3.1 LaTeX2HTML

LATEX2HTML is a collection of perl scripts that maps LATEX document structures into a navigable HTML web and also converts content that cannot be represented as HTML into browser-readable images within that web. It was originated by Nikos Drakos at the University of Leeds, U.K. but has since been extended by an ad hoc consortium of technical documentation authors and perl wizards. It handles the document conversion as follows:

  • a separately-installed LATEX engine (such as that provided by MiKTeX) is used to break the document into components as specified by the user's LATEX sectioning commands, including footnotes, tables of contents, indexing and bibliography;

  • the parts of the document that LATEX2HTML recognizes are converted to the corresponding HTML structures, and are written out, with appropriate hypertext navigation aids, as .html files.

  • all other parts, including mathematical symbols, equations, graphics and images, are turned into .dvi files, .ps files and finally into bitmapped .gif or .png images that are cross-linked to the .html as appropriate. (dvips, Ghostscript, and netpbm are invoked during this conversion and therefore must also be installed.)

  • tables and figures are converted to HTML Table structures and/or images (depending on the HTML output level specified by the user).

  • LATEX cross-references (labels) are converted into internal hyperlinks;

  • external hyperlinks can be generated, so that the .html files can be used as part of a larger document structure on the WWW or Intranet;

  • conditional text structures are provided in an html.sty style file, so that the output can be optimized differently for the .dvi (and hence PostScript or PDF) and the .html versions without further effort by the author.


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2001-04-18