TEX4ht: HTML Production

TEX4ht is a highly configurable system for producing hypertext from TEX-based sources. The system is distributed with a large set of configuration files. The most commonly used configurations are those supporting LATEX inputs and HTML, MathML, OpenOffice, and DocBook targets. The first part of the presentation will describe how the system can be used for different applications. ConTEXt is a new addition to the style files being supported by TEX4ht. The second part of the presentation will describe the work done to provide TEX4ht configurations for ConTEXt, with the objective of offering an insight into the inner working of TEX4ht. 1 From LTEX to Hypertext Reports authored in LATEX may be converted into hypertext through the TEX4ht system [1]. The system offers an assortment of basic commands for invoking translations to different target mark-up languages, provides switches for requesting predefined variations to the default configurations, and lets the users tailor configurations of their own. 1.1 Basic Translations To activate a translation relying on a default configuration, one needs just to invoke an appropriate command and provide it with the LATEX file name. Figure 1 lists a few examples. Most users of the TEX4ht system are probably familiar just with the htlatex option. However, the mzlatex option seems also to be quite popular. From the perspective of a user, the process is similar to that employed in requesting a standard translation to DVI or PDF. In such cases, typically the translations are requested through a command named latex or pdflatex, respectively. HTML devotes very little support to mathematics, providing only simple superscript and subscript elements. Bitmap representations are offered for mathematical expressions to try to address this shortcoming. Such representations are commonly employed as most users are able to view them in This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Award No. IIS-0312487. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. command output comment htlatex abc abc.html HTML, bitmap math xhlatex abc abc.html XHTML, bitmap math mzlatex abc abc.xml XHTML, MathML math oolatex abc abc.sxw OpenOffice XML (uses MathML math) dbmlatex abc abc.xml DocBook, MathML math Figure 1: Requests to compile abc.tex. their browsers. Yet, bitmap representations are visually inferior with respect to their surrounding text, as they do not scale in size. In addition, non-visual applications can make little use of these representations. MathML introduces a markup language for expressing mathematics, in a manner compatible with HTML support of regular text. Currently, not many browsers come with built-in support for MathML. Mozilla is an example of a browser which supports MathML. For Microsoft Internet Explorer, an easily installed plug-in program named MathPlayer offers similar capabilities [2]. Stylesheets are also available to render MathML through XSLT and CSS code [3]. 1.2 Available Adjustments The distribution of TEX4ht provides configurations for default behavior, as well as configurations for achieving alternative outcomes. The latter configurations can be requested by referring to their named options through generalized invocation commands of the following form: TUGboat, Volume 25 (2004), No. 1—Proceedings of the Practical TEX 2004 Conference 39