Usage information for "latex2html"

A software package called latex2html is now running on the UNIX machines in the department. The package is a collection of perl scripts that convert latex files to a collection of html files and graphic images, so that you can easily convert math papers to a format that can be posted on the web. latex2html also reformats the document somewhat. For instance, equation references are hyperlinked to the equation, so that you can jump from one to the other. Similarly, a hyperlinked table of contents appears at the beginning of the paper.

A very rudimentary example is the list of titles and abstracts for the Lukacs Symposium. We also have a more involved example.

If you have an account on the UNIX machines, here is what to do. Log on to one of the SGI workstations in the department, being careful to find one that no one is using at the moment. (latex2html is a CPU hog) Transfer all your .tex and .sty files to your web directory (the subdirectory public_html of your personal directory). Suppose the main file is opus.tex. Run latex there to create the related .aux files:
latex opus.tex
Run latex2html there to create a subdirectory named opus in which all the .html and .gif files will be placed: 

  latex2html opus
Now point your web browser to (change to your name, of course)
http://www-math.bgsu.edu/~zirbel/opus/opus.html
This is about as easy as you could want. Now of course you will want to place links to this .html file on your homepage and the like. To see how to do this, view the source of other people's home pages.

Some notes:

A good command line to use is: 

latex2html -no_navigation -no_reuse -t "Web page title" sourcefile.tex
-no_navigation prevents latex2html from putting additional navigation buttons at the top of every page, while -no_reuse forces it to remake all the .gif images, which is important if you make enough changes to your source file.

It is good to place the .tex file directly in public_html because latex2html creates a subdirectory of that for the .html files.

All .sty files and files you input with \input should be in the same directory. latex2html seems to have trouble referring to \input files in other directories. Don't worry if you use amssym.def and latex2html can't find it. It doesn't seem to matter.

The conversion process takes a while, since most every bit of mathematical notation seems to be processed as a separate image file. In the end, though, the total number of bytes in the resulting .html and .gif files seems to end up being less than the size of the .ps file for the same paper, so there is no storage disadvantage to using latex2html.

Conversion really occupies the cpu, so it is best to use a machine that no one else is using at the moment. Unfortunately, at the moment all the machines are one someone's desk.

From an apple, I would think it would be easiest to ftp the files to your account on artemis, then telnet to artemis to run latex and latex2html. You don't need to sit in front of artemis itself.

We have merely "managed to get this working". Doubtless there will be strange things that happen and things that don't work too well. I would recommend consulting the online documentation for latex2html.