LaTeX2HTML README
=================

Contents
********

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

Overview
********

The LaTeX2HTML 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 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. 
 o 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 online documentation at 
   http://www-texdev.ics.mq.edu.au/l2h/docs/manual/
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 online manual at

   http://www-texdev.ics.mq.edu.au/l2h/docs/manual/Snode2.html

for more information as well as *active* links to any utilities
that you may require. 


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. 
    o Perl 5.003 (Perl5 Patch level 3) or higher.
------^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

    o 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 
    o latex (version 2e recommended but 2.09 acceptable), 
    o 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.
------^^^^
    o 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).
    o 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.
    o 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.
      Hurray!!! Netscape 4.04 has been reported to grok PNG images!
------^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
      That means your PNG option is not longer ahead of its time!
      Unfortunately Netscape still does not make use of the alpha
      channel... still not transparency.

 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
   <ley@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de>. 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 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 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
************

Please consult the section "Installing LaTeX2HTML" of the online manual at

    http://www-texdev.ics.mq.edu.au/l2h/docs/manual/Snode3.html

Also consult the page at

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

for links to special instructions on some platforms.


To install LaTeX2HTML please read the file INSTALL.

Troubleshooting
***************

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


Support and More Information
****************************

Announcements, discussion archives, bug reporting forms and
more are kept at the LaTeX2HTML home at 
http://saftsack.fs.uni-bayreuth.de/~latex2ht/
or
http://cbl.leeds.ac.uk/nikos/tex2html/doc/latex2html/latex2html.html.

*** this site has not been updated since November 1996.
Many of the links are still valid, leading to useful information. 


A LaTeX2HTML mailing list had been set up at the Argonne National Labs
(thanks to Ian Foster <itf@mcs.anl.gov> and Bob Olson <olson@mcs.anl.gov>). 

*** This list is no longer functional; it has now been taken over by the
 TeX User Group (TUG). Thank you Argonne, for the 5+ years of support. 

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: 
            latex2html-request@tug.org 
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: 
           latex2html-request@tug.org 
with the contents 
           unsubscribe


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

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

This mailing list also has a searchable online archive,
from 1994 up until 2003-08, at

   http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/latex2html/


Enjoy!


Original Author:
  Nikos Drakos <nikos@cbl.leeds.ac.uk>
  Computer Based Learning Unit
  University of Leeds.

Most Recent Author:
  Ross Moore <ross@maths.mq.edu.au>
  Mathematics Department
  Macquarie University, Sydney.

Former Authors:
  Marek Rouchal <marek@saftsack.fs.uni-bayreuth.de>
  Infineon Technologies AG
  Munich, Germany

  Jens Lippmann <lippmann@rbg.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de>
  Technische Universit"at Darmstadt.

