List of Features

Following is a listing of the main features of the translator; more specific details on these is given elsewhere in this manual.

The L^ATEX2HTML translator ...

• breaks up a document into one or more components as specified by the user⁵;

• provides optional, customisable iconic navigation panels on every page which contain links to other parts of the document, or other documents;

• handles inlined equations ( $\sum_{{i=1}}^{{n}}$x_i = $\int_{{0}}^{{1}}$f ), handles equation alignment ( A_BC+D ), right-justified numbered equations (see example), tables (see example), figures (see example), and any arbitrary environment. Either the complete environment or sub-parts thereof... are passed to L^ATEX for conversion to images, which are then either included in the document or are made available through hypertext links.

• figures or tables can be arbitrarily scaled and oriented, and shown either as inlined images or ``thumbnail'' sketches... or their contents displayed within a table constructed using the <TABLE> tags of HTML 3.2.

• theorem-like environments are supported, along with automatic numbering and counter dependencies.

• can produce output suitable for browsers that support inlined images or character-based browsers (as specified by the user). In particular the TEX or L^ATEX code for mathematical expressions and formulas will be displayed in character-based browsers, such as lynx.

• coloured text and/or background is fully supported, as is the ability to use an image to create a tiled backdrop.

• handles definitions of new commands, environments and counters even when these are defined in external files for input⁶;

• handles footnotes⁷, tables of contents, lists of figures and tables, bibliographies and can generate an index. By including hyperlinks between index entries, simple navigation aids can be built into the index, for easy browsing.

• automatically translates cross-references and citations into hyper-links, and extends the L^ATEX cross-referencing mechanism to work not just within a document but between documents which may reside in remote locations;

• translates L^ATEX accent and special character commands (e.g. Øö £©¶) to the equivalent ISO-Latin-1 or Unicode character set, else an image can be created;

• recognises hypertext links (to multi-media resources or arbitrary Internet services such as sound, video, ftp, http, news) and links which invoke arbitrary program scripts--all expressed as L^ATEX commands;

• recognises conditional text which is intended only for the hypertext version, or only for the paper (.dvi) version;

• can include raw HTML in a L^ATEX document (e.g. in order to specify interactive forms);

• can deal sensibly with at least the Common L^ATEX Commands summarised at the back of
  virtually all of the concepts and commands described in the L^ATEX blue book, where there is a meaningful interpretation appropriate to an HTML document. Also many other L^ATEX constructions are handled, including many described in the L^ATEX Companion and L^ATEX Graphics Companion (e.g. X_Y-pic);

• can be configured to translate equations either as GIF images or as HTML 3.0 mark-up (as browsers become available which are suitable for the task), or by making images of subparts of equations, as required.

• links symbolic references across document segments which have been independently processed;

• will try to translate any document with embedded L^ATEX commands, irrespective of whether it is complete or syntactically legal.