[l2h] LaTeX2HTML and chess

[Pieter de Visser]

Since early last year I've been using LaTeX2HTML for creating the online version of our chessclub's
magazine, called De Veldkoker. The results can be seen at
http://www.knoware.nl/users/pieterdv/veldkoker/ (warning: it's in dutch).

In this message, I'll describe my setup, but first, two problems:

(0) Today, I installed netpbm 9.16. When subsequently configuring LaTeX2HTML 2K.1beta, I get the
following message:

	checking if ppmtogif can make transparent GIFs... error
	    Execution of /usr/local/bin/ppmtogif did not produce expected output

    Is this serious?

(1) This week, I've upgraded to LaTeX2HTML 2K.1beta, and since then I'm getting the infamous black
borders, even with the latest netpbm 9.16 (see e.g. veldkoker/img4.png in veldkoker-jul01.tgz
mentioned below). Do I need to patch pstoimg after all?


In order to get a (for me) pleasing output, I've patched LaTeX2HTML 2K.1beta in four places. The
sources of the latest edition of De Veldkoker are in
http://www.knoware.nl/users/pieterdv/veldkoker/sources/veldkoker-jul01.tgz. There are two
subdirectories in this archive: veldkoker-orig contains the output from the unpatched LaTeX2HTML,
veldkoker contains the output from LaTeX2HTML with the patches applied.

The first patch applies to versions/html3_2.pl, the other ones to latex2html. All are marked by
comments containing my initials (PdV). The patches are:

(a) The html3_2.pl patch (at http://www.knoware.nl/users/pieterdv/veldkoker/sources/html3_2.pl)
removes empty columns from a table. See e.g. node11.html in the outputs for the differences.

(b) I've added a "-no_foot_title" option which removes the "Voetnoot" (dutch for "Footnote")
preceding any footnotes. I find that, in the Veldkoker HTML files, the horizontal bar suffices as a
separator. Also, "Voetnoot" is singular, whereas the number of footnotes can be more than one. See
e.g. node16.html.

(c) I don't include "last words" in footnotes. The original .dvi output doesn't contain them either,
and they are not consistently present. See e.g. node16.html for the differences.

(d) There seem to be two bugs in do_cmd_footnotetext, preventing the footnote from pointing back
into the text. See e.g. node16.html, footnote 4.


The LaTeX chess-specific files I'm using are based upon chsmac09, an extension of the CTAN chess
package which dates from the BBS era and never seems to have made it to the internet (until now,
it's at http://www.knoware.nl/users/pieterdv/veldkoker/sources/chsmac09.tgz).

For LaTeX, the root directory in veldkoker-jul01.tgz contains the following files:
- addchess.sty, taken from chsmac09
- vkchesspls.sty, derived from chsmac09's chesspls.sty
- vkdefs.tex, mainly containing macros also used by LaTeX2HTML
- veldkoker.sty, the main style file

For LaTeX2HTML, the following files appear:
- .latex2html-init
- veldkoker.perl, translating all three style files


I hope this is useful for someone out there. I was pleasantly surprised how little effort it took me
at the time to convert my LaTeX-based magazine to an online version. Thanks for all that contributed
to LaTeX2HTML!

Pieter