# [l2h] Format of array of formulae

Alan Fry ajf at afco.demon.co.uk
Wed Nov 22 15:49:26 CET 2006

It was extremely helpful to see the examples of so many different
ways of writing equations.

On 20 Nov 2006, at 21:05, Ross Moore wrote:

<snip>

> Alternatively, \usepackage{amsmath}  and then use:
>
> \begin{align}
> \label{eq:2}
> &\bar P_{1} = - \bar P_{4} \\
> &\bar P_{2} = - \bar P_{5}
> \end{align}
>
> or
>
> \begin{align}
> \label{eq:2}
> \bar P_{1} &= - \bar P_{4} \\
> \bar P_{2} &= - \bar P_{5}
> \end{align}

The latter results in the following HTML (slightly edited for clarity):

<DIV ALIGN="CENTER">
<TR VALIGN="MIDDLE">
<TD NOWRAP ALIGN="RIGHT">
<IMG WIDTH="21" HEIGHT="34" ALIGN="MIDDLE" SRC="img5.gif" ALT…>
</TD>
<TD NOWRAP ALIGN="left">
<IMG WIDTH="51" HEIGHT="34" ALIGN="MIDDLE" SRC="img16.gif" ALT…>
</TD>
<\TR>
…
</TABLE>
</DIV>

Consequently the two cells take their widths in the ratio of the
widths of the two images i.e. in this example 21:51, which is some
way from the centre of the page.

Would it not be better if the first cell (or maybe both) were given
'width="50%"'. Then, irrespective of the widths of the expressions
either side of the equation, the equals sign would be bang in the
middle every time.

I see 'latex2html' declares <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML
3.2 Final//EN"> under which widths in the TD tag must be a number.
But percentages are allowed under <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD
HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
and I wonder if that could not be used instead?

> Personally, many of my mathematician friends who need to
> do a lot of LaTeX coding feel that it is generally better
> to use the {amsmath} environments.
> LaTeX2HTML handles these quite well too.

My apologies if this newcomer to 'latex2html' is tramping over well
worn ground here.

Regards,

Alan Fry