[tex4ht] Multitude of problems when trying to convert from .tex to .html.

Mon Mar 8 04:37:30 CET 2021

Hello!

 > I've downloaded your project and I can compile it.

Thank you very much for looking into this issue, it helped a lot!

 > I suspect that this may be caused by use of older TeX distribution. 
Which distribution do you use?

I just checked, and apparently, I still used texlive2017. It also looks 
like all texlive-related packages are at version 2017.something in the 
Ubuntu package repositories. I re-installed it now from another 
repository, and now I have the 2019 version (the same goes for tex4ht). 
I also noticed I had make4ht version v0.2e, so I downloaded v0.3f from 
the GitHub repository and installed it using `make` and `make install` 
(I hope that was correct). I can't run the new installation without sudo 
yet, though, since it seems I accidentally installed it as a super user; 
I will fix this tomorrow.

I followed your instructions (creating `config.cfg`, creating the css 
file it references, using the command you provided, inserting the code 
you provided into the .tex-file, and, of course, doing my best to 
understand it) from that point on, and it worked as intended (with 
stunning results).

 > BTW, I see that you use Github Actions. You can use make4ht in GitHub 
Actions to compile your file on server and automatically publish on 
Github Pages.

I was actually planning to do exactly that. I hacked together some 
Python code to fix the multiline-problem and the footnote problem using 
beautyfulsoup on the generated html and was just in the process of 
setting it up to work with GitHub actions, when I received your emailÂ  
which made my efforts pleasantly obsolete.

Thanks again for looking into this and giving me this detailed 
explanation on how to solve the problem and why it arises; it's very 
much appreciated and helped me out a lot! :)

Best regards,
phseiff

On 07.03.21 21:16, Michal Hoftich wrote:
> Hello!
>
>> I am trying to convert some .tex files to .html files (I am hoping to 
>> automate this process over the next view days as part of a pipeline), 
>> and I ran into a couple of problems doing so. The documentation I 
>> found assumes that these problems don't happen, and everything I 
>> found so far wasn't able to solve these problems, so I decided I'd 
>> just ask for it here directly.
>
> I've downloaded your project and I can compile it. In particular, I 
> don't have issues with \tableofcontents, or with \multicolumn. I 
> suspect that this may be caused by use of older TeX distribution. 
> Which distribution do you use?
>
> There is one fatal issue, related to your \maketitle.
>
> You use the following code:
>
> %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
> \title{\begin{center}
> Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
> %\BeginAccSupp{method=plain,Alt={\GenderRender\\Specification}}
> Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  \includegraphics{images/title-black.pdf}
> Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  %\EndAccSupp{}
> \end{center} Template system and implementation specification for 
> rendering gender-neutral email templates with pronoun information}
> %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
>
> This causes TeX4ht to fail. The problem is caused mainly by use of 
> \begin{center}...\end{center}
> It is fortunately simple to fix that. Use custom command that will be 
> changed when TeX4ht is used:
>
> %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
> \newcommand\titlegraphics[1]{%
> \begin{center}%
> Â \includegraphics{#1}%
> \end{center}%
> }
> % end.
>
> \title{ %\BeginAccSupp{method=plain,Alt={\GenderRender\\Specification}}
> Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  \titlegraphics{images/title-black.pdf}%
> Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  %\EndAccSupp{}
> Template system and implementation specification for rendering 
> gender-neutral email templates with pronoun information}
> %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
>
> You may need to delete the .aux and .xref files to fix the fatal error 
> that happens because of code that was inserted to them on the last 
> successful run.
>
> All TeX4ht specific stuff can be now fixed in a .cfg file. Save the 
> following code as config.cfg:
>
> %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
> \Preamble{xhtml}
> % support for the \subsubsubsection command
> \NewSection\subsubsubsection{}
> \Configure{subsubsubsection}{\refstepcounter{subsubsubsection}}{}
> {\ifvmode\IgnorePar\fi\EndP\HCode{<h6 
> class="subsubsubsection">}\thesubsubsubsection\space}{\HCode{</h6>}}
> % fixes for \title
> % we need to redefine commands that cause issues here to do nothing
> \Configure{@TITLE}{\renewcommand\titlegraphics[1]{}}
> \renewcommand\titlegraphics[1]{\ifvmode\IgnorePar\fi\EndP%
> \HCode{<div class="titlegraphics">}\includegraphics{#1}\HCode{</div>}}
> % add custom CSS
> \Configure{AddCss}{myfixes.css}
> % change rungs to gs
> \Configure{Ghostscript}{gs}
> % don't set image size
> \Configure{Gin-dim}{}
> % images should have maximum width same as display width
> \Css{img {
> Â Â  max-width: 100\%;
> Â Â  height: auto;
> }}
> \begin{document}
> \EndPreamble
> %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
>
> This configuration file does several things:
>
> 1. support for \subsubsubsection command is added. Every sectioning 
> command needs special configuration in TeX4ht. Standard \chapter or
> \sectionÂ  commands work out of the box, but new commands needs at least
> \NewSection\commandname.
> \Configure{subsubsubsection} defines HTML code that should be used for 
> this command. We also handle the counter here.
>
> 2. fixes for \title command. Because contents of \title is used in the 
> <title> element, which supports only plain text, we need to remove 
> everything that may cause issues. In particular the image. This is 
> achieved using:
>
> \Configure{@TITLE}{\renewcommand\titlegraphics[1]{}}
>
> This code is executed when <title> is written to the HTML file. It is 
> executed in a group, so it doesn't collide with the definition of 
> \titlegraphics that is used in \maketitle. Because we don't want image 
> in <title>, we can redefine it to just print nothing.
>
> In \maketitle, the following code will be used:
>
> \renewcommand\titlegraphics[1]{\ifvmode\IgnorePar\fi\EndP%
> \HCode{<div class="titlegraphics">}\includegraphics{#1}\HCode{</div>}}
>
> It inserts the image inside a <div> element, so you can style it if 
> you want. It is centered by default, because the whole contents of 
> \maketitle are centered using CSS.
>
> 3. custom CSS
>
> Because you may want to change how stuff looks, an external CSS file 
> is inserted using \Configure{AddCss}{myfixes.css}
>
> The myfixes.css can look like this:
>
> %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
> /* Fix heading sizes */
> h5.subsubsectionHead{font-size:1em;}
> h6.subsubsubsection{font-size:1em;}
>
> /* Set maximum width */
> body{
> Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  margin:1em auto;
> Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  max-width:65ch;
> Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  padding:0 .62em;
> Â Â  line-height: calc(1ex / 0.32);
> Â Â  /* uncomment following line to set bigger font size */
> Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  /* font:1.2em/1.62 serif; */
> }
> %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
>
> It fixes sections that are smaller than the paragraph text and defines 
> some basic style of your document. You can add more stuff here.
>
>
> 4. images
>
> If rungs is not available on your system, try to change the name of 
> Ghostscript command using
>
> \Configure{Ghostscript}{gs}
>
> rungs is used by TeX Live. I believe that it is used also by Miktex. 
> It is possible that some Linux distributions use just `gs`.Â
> Once your PDF file is converted to PNG, run this command:
>
> ebb -x images/*.png
>
> It will create .xbb files with image dimensions for all PNG files in 
> your images directory. It will remove TeX4ht warnings about unknown 
> image sizes.
>
> ---------------------------
>
> With these fixes, I get relatively nice web page.
> To compile your file with this configuration file, run the following 
> command:
>
> Â Â Â  make4ht -c config.cfg spec.tex "fn-in"
>
> BTW, I see that you use Github Actions. You can use make4ht in Github 
> Actions to compile your file on server and automatically publish on 
> Github Pages. I use this method here: 
> https://github.com/michal-h21/tex4ht-doc
>
> Best regards,
> Michal