[l2h] announce: release version: LaTeX2HTML 2002-1

[Ross Moore]

This is to announce a new version of LaTeX2HTML, numbered  2002-1 .

It's a relatively minor release, but having 2 significant differences
to the previously current version of  latex2html.

 1.  Improved support for the \includegraphics command,
     thanks to Bruce Miller <bruce.miller@nist.gov> .

     Firstly, if an image is already available as a .jpg, .png or .gif
     in the same directory as the .eps  or on a designated path, then
     this will be used, instead of creating a new image via the .eps .

     Secondly, most (if not all) of the possible options to \includegraphics
     (e.g. scaling, rotation, clip, viewport, etc.) are now supportedi for
     the existing image. An appropriate sequence of commands, using several 
     of the  netpbm  utilities, is used to achieve the requested effect.

     Furthermore, if the image is available in a different format than
     the standard ones listed above, (e.g. you may have it as a .tiff, .pcx,
     .xbm or Macintosh .pict format graphic) then you can request this be used
     after converting to .jpg (or .png or .gif). Any bitmap format for which
     there is a utility in the netpbm suite can be handled this way.


     For this to work robustly on all platforms, the installation procedure
     has undergone a few changes, to check and record the locations of the
     required utilities. This change to configuration/installation is the
     main reason for changing the release number.


 2.  It was pointed out, by Nelson Beebe, that LaTeX2HTML was storing the
      l2hconf.pm  file in a directory named  /usr/local/share/lib/latex2html 
     despite it containing platform-specific information.

     Now this file will be placed in  /usr/local/lib/latex2html  with the
     non-platform-specific files in  /usr/local/share/lib/latex2html , 
     as previously. $LATEX2HTMLDIR still refers to this latter location,
     with a new variable  $LATEX2HTMLPLATDIR  referring to the former.

     Of course these locations are configurable.

     Beware: /usr/local/share/lib/latex2html/l2hconf.pm  (from an earlier
      installation) should be removed, so that it is not found instead of
      the newer  /usr/local/lib/latex2html/l2hconf.pm .
      This is *important*, since there are changes to this file, due to the
      new graphics support described above.


To implement the changes described above, the following files have changed:

    latex2html.pin 			revision: 1.67
    configure				revision: 1.7
    l2hconf.pin 			revision: 1.13
    config/config.pl			revision: 1.44
    config/install.pl			revision: 1.12
    styles/graphics.perl 		revision: 1.17
    styles/graphicx.perl 		revision: 1.17
    styles/graphics-support.perl (new)	revision: 1.5

So if you don't do a full install, then check that you have the
correct revisions and make whatever adjustments are appropriate
for your site.


Other recent small changes include:

    styles/CJK.perl			revision: 1.8

    thanks to Werner Lemberg, Jungshik Shin, and myself (RRM)
    this now automatically assigns a charset to the HTML page, based upon
    the first {CJK} or {CJK*} environment that occurs in the document.
    (Usually there is only one; we need new methods for multi-lingual docs.)


    styles/slovene.perl			revision: 1.2

    thanks to  Roman Maurer <roman@shark.amis.net>  for words and phrases.


    versions/html3_2.pl			revision: 1.64
    versions/html4_0.pl			revision: 1.40
    versions/html4_01.pl		revision: 1.7

    - removal of excessive blank space after {eqnarray} and {eqnarray*} envs.
    - fixed support for  \multirow  command, in {tabular} environments,
      to correspond to the syntax in the  multirow.sty  package.


    version/math.pl			revision: 1.74

    - removal of excessive blank space after {eqnarray} and {eqnarray*} envs.
    - recognises +/- as unary operators in parsing modes; i.e. extra braces
      such as in {-}1 are *no longer* needed to avoid an extra space.
    - \boldsymbol is handled better


    l2hconf.pin			(since revision 1.12)

    - now allows for both .gif and .png versions of the standard icons.
    This means that the $IMAGE_TYPE variable, hence the  -image_type  switch,
    can be used to select the format of the icons, as well as the images
    generated from LaTeX using  pstoimg .  

    Of course, users are encouraged to develop and use their own sets of
    images for icons; especially since many surfers use browsers that don't
    handle transparency in PNG images, and GIF is still encumbered.
    (I have a set of PNG icons for LaTeX2HTML with a white background.)


Macintosh OS X support

    LaTeX2HTML installs and runs just fine, under MacOS X, just as for any
    other Unix-based operating system.

    There is also a 'fink' installation, which is based upon the Debian
    package-management system.  Thanks to  Dave Morrison for this.
    It runs smoothly as a one-click install...

$ICONSERVER, and wizards:

    ... however, this will *not* adjust the $ICONSERVER variable, so that
    your icons can be served "on the web". The default local path works
    just fine for viewing local pages; but for web-surfer access to your
    pages, a web-address (URL) *must* be given. 

    This is the eternal problem, which must be faced at *every* site.
    A fully automatic installer cannot tackle this problem.

    What is needed is a wizard-like installation, where the issues are
    described and an appropriate URL can be provided. This means that
    *platform-specific* coding is needed to run the wizard.


So there's a summary of the recent developments for LaTeX2HTML.
Please report any difficulties that you may encounter with the new installation
procedures. (That part is all my own work --- almost certainly there is a small
slip-up somewhere.) 
When reporting difficulties, make sure that you state the platform,
and have checked revision numbers to be at least as large as those listed above.


All the best,

	Enjoy LaTeX2HTML

		Ross Moore