[l2h] problems installing latex2html on a win xp system, please help

[Philip G. Ratcliffe]

> i tried to install latex2html on a windows xp system. I downloaded the
> newest version of perl and netpbm,
> installed both in a directory whose path does not have blancs in
> it. then i
> edited the file prefs.pm (the only thing i changed was the path to where i
> want to install it (i used the \\ encoding for the \ )). Then i called
> configure.bat and everything went fine. But when i call test.bat i get the
> following error message:
>
> "Global symbol "$PNMFILE" requires explicit package name at
> C:\latex2html-2002-2\pstoimg.bat line 1285."
>
> Does anyone know what i did wrong, or how to fix it? I spend the last two
> days, reading through guides, editing the scripts, trying different
> settings.

I also had this problem (under Windogs 2000 - I shall have to get my act
together and get a Linux box up and running) and suffered a lot in trying to
sort it out.  The cause appears to be that latex2html wants to find all
netpbm program files as .exe while in the latest version some (pnmfile, for
example) are not - they don't actually have any extension.  Why, I don't
know.

I got round it by editing the pstoimg.bat file, changing

my $PNMFILE = '';

into

my $PNMFILE = 'C:\\Programs\\GnuWin32\\bin\\pnmfile';

(you will probably need a different path)

There were other lines with '' too, you'll have to find these yourself.

(I also played with making copied of the culprit files with and .exe
extension and I seem to remember that this also worked)

Finally, I had to cut out line 1264:

$trans_color = $TRANSPARENT_COLOR||'gray85';

Again, why exactly I don't know.  I should file a bug report I suppose, but
just don't have time.

For your information, I also tried setting up an older version of
latex2html, but all the images generated for math had thick black borders
and I couldn't figure that one out at all.

However, I played with this for hours and hours, never getting consistent
results, so I'm not really sure where the problem lies.  Anyway, I hope this
helps.

Cordialmente,  Philip G. Ratcliffe