[latex2html] latex2html and web publishing

[Les Richardson]

>This latex is translated to html (and xml/mathml in the future) and cached
>to improve the response of the system.

Why don't you just dynamically generate the text but serve it statically
so that there is no performance degradation.


>On demand it can be used to
>generate postscript or pdf

I generate pdf using pdftex. It is very quick. (visible at: 
www.sasked.gov.sk.ca/testbank)
I generate latex files from a MySQL database of test items (an online testbank)
using perl as cgi glue.

>The resulting "page" can also be obtained by a search (say: generate a
>booklet of all pages concerning "fourier transform" at intermediate level,
>tc.).
>
>I'm using latex2html, which is however quite slow. I partially solved the
>problem by caching the html pages. I'm planning to cache latex2html into
>the web server, using mod_perl or fastcgi.

But the pages are stored in latex or html format? It sounds like latex and 
converted on the fly to html?
This is going to be slow anyway you slice it (mod_perl) since the graphics 
are going to take time to convert.

You should have a look at the ImageMagick graphics utilities, which is what 
I believe latex2html uses also. I use them on my testbank site also.

>Another possibility I am
>exploring is to facilitate image reusing by storing all images in a common
>directory. Clearly, the finer the level of image splitting, the higher the
>possibility of sharing them.

But a particular image is generated for use with a particular html file. 
These normally all go into a common folder which is formatted with your css 
of choice. How are you storing your data now? I'm still wrestling with this 
now, since I store the images for test items in a particular web visible 
folder while the data items reside as records in the database. I'm still 
not particularly happy with this at this point, but storing the images in 
the database will have performance implications that I don't like either.

Les Richardson
H. Hardcastle School
Edam, Sk, Canada





>Could it be possible to replace
>(partially) the conversion from dvi->postscript->gif/png
>with a dvi2png or dvi2gif driver? there is a dvi2gif
>(http://members.home.net/gweigt/) program, or one could hack xdvi or dvilj
>(maybe with mathml this is useless..)
>
>Another problem is that latex2html is
>designed to convert whole files and generate whole html pages, while I
>need to include the generated html into another document (I could use
>frames to overcome this problem).
>
>  --
>Franco Bagnoli
>Dipartimento di Matematica Applicata "G. Sansone"
>Universita' di Firenze, Via S. Marta, 3 I-50139 Firenze, Italy
>tel. +39 0554796422, fax: +39 055471787
>e-mail: bagnoli@dma.unifi.it
>
>
>
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