TeX4ht is a configurable converter capable of translating

TeX Tex, TeX, TEX, may refer to: People and fictional characters * Tex (nickname), a list of people and fictional characters with the nickname * Tex Earnhardt (1930–2020), U.S. businessman * Joe Tex (1933–1982), stage name of American soul singer ...

and

LaTeX Latex is an emulsion (stable dispersion) of polymer microparticles in water. Latices are found in nature, but synthetic latices are common as well. In nature, latex is found as a wikt:milky, milky fluid, which is present in 10% of all floweri ...

documents to

HTML Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets ( ...

and certain

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing data. It defines a set of rules for encoding electronic document, documents in a format that is both human-readable and Machine-r ...

formats. Most notably, TeX4ht serves for converting (La)TeX documents to formats used by

word processor A word processor (WP) is a device or computer program that provides for input, editing, formatting, and output of text, often with some additional features. Early word processors were stand-alone devices dedicated to the function, but current word ...

s. It was developed by Eitan M. Gurari. The program is published under the LaTeX Project Public License (LPPL).

History

TeX4ht was developed in the 1990s to convert (La)TeX to HTML, helping to publish scientific documents that were written in (La)TeX on the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW or simply the Web) is an information system that enables Content (media), content sharing over the Internet through user-friendly ways meant to appeal to users beyond Information technology, IT specialists and hobbyis ...

for display in a

web browser A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...

. Particularly,

hypertext Hypertext is E-text, text displayed on a computer display or other electronic devices with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access. Hypertext documents are interconnected by hyperlinks, which are typic ...

features were supported, so it became possible to include

hyperlinks In computing, a hyperlink, or simply a link, is a digital reference providing direct access to data by a user's clicking or tapping. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text with ...

in the web version of documents. More XML-based formats were supported gradually. As of 2023,

HTML5 HTML5 (Hypertext Markup Language 5) is a markup language used for structuring and presenting hypertext documents on the World Wide Web. It was the fifth and final major HTML version that is now a retired World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommend ...

XHTML Extensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML) is part of the family of XML markup languages which mirrors or extends versions of the widely used HyperText Markup Language (HTML), the language in which Web pages are formulated. While HTML, pr ...

MathML Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) is a pair of mathematical markup languages, an application of XML for describing mathematical notations and capturing both its structure and content. Its aim is to natively integrate mathematical formulae ...

OpenDocument The Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF), also known as OpenDocument, standardized as ISO 26300, is an open file format for word processor, word processing documents, spreadsheets, Presentation program, presentations and ...

DocBook DocBook is a Semantics (computer science), semantic markup language for technical documentation. It was originally intended for writing technical documents related to computer hardware and software, but it can be used for any other sort of docume ...

EPUB EPUB is an e-book file format that uses the ".epub" file extension. The term is short for ''electronic publication'' and is sometimes stylized as ''ePUB''. EPUB is supported by many e-readers, and compatible software is available for most smart ...

and TEI are supported. JavaHelp can also be generated. TeX4ht is now included preconfigured with all TeX distributions. Since Eitan M. Gurari's death the program has been maintained by Radhakrishnan CV (no longer active), Karl Berry, and Michal Hoftich, with contributions from many others.

Function

TeX4ht does not directly transform TeX or LaTeX markup into the output

markup language A markup language is a Encoding, text-encoding system which specifies the structure and formatting of a document and potentially the relationships among its parts. Markup can control the display of a document or enrich its content to facilitate au ...

(HTML etc.) Instead, an ordinary (La)TeX run compiles a DVI file from the source first. TeX4ht subsequently processes the DVI file. Cf. ''The LaTeX Web Companion'', pp. 169f. Other converters, most notably LaTeX2HTML or TtH operate in a single pass. TeX4ht essentially can deal with any successfully compiling (La)TeX document source. TeX4ht can also incorporate support publicly available macro packages or user-made (perhaps document-specific) commands to process features that transcend standard TeX formats, such as for managing bibliography with

BibTeX BibTeX is both a bibliographic flat-file database file format and a software program for processing these files to produce lists of references (citations). The BibTeX file format is a widely used standard with broad support by reference manage ...

, because these extensions do not need corresponding implementations in the converter. Mathematical formulae and other characters or symbols that cannot be displayed as text are converted into graphics. Mathematics can also be converted into

or form suitable for processing with

MathJax MathJax is a cross-browser JavaScript library that displays mathematical notation in web browsers, using MathML, LaTeX, and ASCIIMathML markup. MathJax is released as open-source software under the Apache License. The MathJax project started in ...

. TeX4ht can convert LaTeX documents into

Microsoft Word Microsoft Word is a word processor program, word processing program developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platf ...

's ''doc'' format via the

format, ODT.

References

Literature

* Translating LaTeX to HTML using TeX4ht, in: Michel Goossens,

Sebastian Rahtz Sebastian Patrick Quintus Rahtz (13 February 1955 – 15 March 2016) (SPQR) was a British digital humanities information professional. Education and early life Born in 1955 to archaeologist Philip Rahtz, Sebastian also trained in archaeolog ...

, Eitan M. Gurari, Ross Moore, Robert S. Sutor. The LaTeX Web Companion. Integrating TeX, HTML, and XML. 1999. 8th printing January 2006. pp. 155–194. * Eitan Gurari
HTML Production
TUGBoat 25 (2004), No. 1, pp. 39–47.

External links

Project Homepage

Online Manual

SimpleTeX4ht
- Graphic frontend for TeX4ht for Mac OS X
Other conversions to and from (La)TeX
TeX HTML XML software Word processors

History

Function

See also

References

Literature

External links