According to Andy Bradford:
> Thus said Greg Gamble on Tue, 30 Jan 2001 18:33:33 +1000:
>
> > This *isn't* the right place for such a question ... but nevertheless
>
> I thought it would be so---*is* there a proper list?
I believe the newsgroup comp.text.tex would be the most appropriate.
Also, a good place to find out info. relating to TeX (as opposed to info.
regarding problems with installation etc. with the teTeX distribution of
TeX) is to navigate the
http://www.tug.org/
site (TUG = TeX Users Group). In particular, at:
http://www.tug.org/interest.html#web
you will see listed a range of converters (including LaTeX2HTML, TeX4ht,
TtH and some others).
I mentioned LaTeX2HTML and TtH because they are the ones I'm familiar with.
LaTeX2HTML will convert plain TeX, but it's primarily a LaTeX tool (that's
what it's designed for) ... but it needs a number of other things to be
installed: TeX/LaTeX, Perl 5, netpbm tools, gs (a fairly recent version) ...
TtH is a C program and needs nothing else.
One of the advantages of TtH is that it keeps the output simple ... it's
all HTML, no GIFs or whatever.
> > TtH: a TeX to HTML translator (http://hutchinson.belmont.ma.us/tth/)
>
> I have already installed this (maybe I should have mentioned this) and
> it didn't seem to handle it very well.
The problems that converters have tend to stem from users mixing explicit
with logical mark-up ... LaTeX2HTML when it sees \section{...} knows to
use <H..> ... </H..> tags, and will do other things like build a Table
of Contents, but won't know that \centerline{\bf ...} is intended as a
section heading.
Both LaTeX2HTML and TtH have comprehensive manuals. You should spend some
time and RTFM. In particular, they both provide conditionals so you can
make macros expand differently when seen by LaTeX2HTML as opposed to LaTeX
etc.
My advice is, do some pre-processing of your document first. Identify
elements which are complicated or where explicit mark-up can be replaced by
a logical alternative (above: \centerline{\bf ...} is explicit and LaTeX's
\section{...} is logical, i.e. for the latter its purpose is clear).
You may want to write a few lines of Perl (or some-such) to filter your
source files through before passing them to the HTML converter.
You should be willing to experiment. Do the conversion; determine where
it didn't quite do what you wanted; RTFM to find out why ... and if that
doesn't give you answers, email the converter's list (both LaTeX2HTML and
TtH have a list, and they are responsive); use conditionals or pre-processing
and try again.
For converting my c.v. to HTML, I wrote my own Perl converter ... I knew
the logical structure of my c.v. written in LaTeX and I wrote my converter
to suit that. Sometimes that's the best way.
Anyway, as I said before this list is the right place to discuss it.
It's just that you tend to have a broad spectrum of users who are
often on the other lists where a subject should be discussed.
Regards,
Greg Gamble
