[l2h] Re: hyperref.sty vs. html.sty: "\textunderscore undefined"

[Heiko Oberdiek]

On Thu, Sep 12, 2002 at 12:21:34AM -0700, Julius Smith wrote:

> I often use the construct (from html.sty)
> 
> 	\htmladdnormallinkfoot{description}{http://www.somewhere.org/\~{}name/file\_name.html}
> 
> (Note the quoted '~' and '_'.)  This has been working fine for some years.
> 
> Today I tried using the hyperref package for the first time, and I ran 
> into the error  "\textunderscore undefined" at '\_'.  After some Web 
> searching and general futzing around, I seem to have come up with the 
> following workaround:
> 
> 	\htmladdnormallinkfoot{description}{\url{http://www.somewhere.org/~name/file_name.html}}
> 
> (Note the use of \url{} and no more quoting of '~' and '_'.)
> 
> While this seems to work, based on a test sample of one, I wonder if 
> there is a better, more "correct" way to handle this problem?

I do not know, because I never used latex2html or html.sty.
Both html.sty and hyperref.sty look very nasty:

html:
\ifx\pdfunknown\relax
 \html@new{\htmladdnormallinkfoot}[2]{#1\footnote{#2}} 
\else
 \def\htmladdnormallinkfoot#1#2{\footnote{\href{#2}{#1}}}
\fi

hyperref:
\def\htmladdnormallinkfoot#1#2{\href{#2}{#1}\footnote{#2}}

\href supports in the first argument ~, \~, _, but these
commands are wrong in the second one or inside footnote.

Perhaps \string~ and \string_ can be used in both cases, but
I cannot give a recommendation. But I have added some commands
(\_, \textunderscore, \textasciitilde) to \hyper@normalise,
so your example can work now (v6.72y).
(See README for download location.)

Yours sincerely
  Heiko <oberdiek@uni-freiburg.de>