[l2h] Install LaTeX2HTML on Windows XP

[Dr6583@aol.com]

In a message dated 8/15/2002 8:50:53 PM Central Daylight Time, 
peacedan@yahoo.com writes:

> The output files were actually
>  p<num>.t00 instead of p<num>.t01. No wonder why
>  p<num>.t01 files not found and images couldn't be
>  converted. Manually, this command works as expected,
>  but in .bat file it strangely creates p<num>.t00
>  files. Maybe that is a problem for NT or XP.

I recall having similar problems in the past.  Oddly, reinstalling everything 
(MikTeX, GS, Pearl, netpbm, L2H) to the same drive letter resolved the 
problem.  Doesn't make sense, I know, but I recreated the scenario no less 
than 3 times with the same results.  Now that everything is on the same 
logical drive (separate from the system partition, BTW) it all works 
perfectly.  I did, however, keep short directory names on everything.  I 
currently have on NT4:

L2H 2002-1 (1.68)
GS 7.04
netpbm 10.6
ActivePerl 5.6.1.631

...and they are all installed on a separate NTFS partition from the system 
partition.  In L2H the temp is set to l2htemp (completely separate from the 
NT tmp environment variable, BTW).

Also, since we are on the subject of Windows, you may notice (if you ever get 
it working that is) that the default name for the local initialization file, 
.latex2html-init, does not sit well with Windows (at least not w/ NT so I 
assume not w/ 9x or XP either).  After install, you may notice that the file 
is actually created as dot.latex2html-init.  Evidently NT parses the leading 
period as a literal dot.  If you don't plan on needing local customizations 
(i.e. control everything w/ l2hconf.pm) then this *shouldn't*, in theory, be 
an issue.  But it can easily be resolved by renaming the file to something 
friendly to NT (and for that matter, DOS) , e.g. l2hinit in my case.  Then, 
you can tell L2H about the change via the l2hconf.pm file by adding:

$INIT_FILE_NAME = $ENV{'L2HINIT_NAME'} || 'l2hinit';

Notice if you use the suggested syntax in the remarks in l2hconf.pm it will 
not work, but the above syntax does work (courtesy of Ross, thanks).  BTW 
ROSS, it would be nice if this was incorporated in a future release as the 
default for Windows users.

All that said, I do find it strange that seemingly identical configurations 
will run on one Windows box and not another which IMO implies the 
configurations are *not* identical, of course.  The $64K question is, *what* 
is different about my configuration which runs L2H perfectly, from other 
configurations which do not? 

Regards,
Darrell