Examples of different TeX to HTML approaches
Both of the following methods were converted from the
same LaTeX
source.
dvi2html
Starting with a .dvi file, we have a script (dvi2html)
which converts it to PostScript and PDF and (page-by-page) to GIF.
These various formats are made available via some automatically
created HTML pages.
SAMPLE
PROS
- Very easy to produce
- Makes all formats available to students for download.
CONS
- Students who print the HTML pages with included GIF's
tie-up the print queues.
- Currently, (on Unix) production of PDF from DVI source
results in very large files.
htmx
Starting with TeX or LaTeX source, we can produce an
HTMX file
which is processed by a script into native HTML.
SAMPLE.
PROS
- Extremely small files save bandwidth and download time.
- Less confusion for students about different formats.
- Prints much faster.
CONS
- Still uses GIF's (but only small ones for each equation).
- The images of equations cannot be rescaled, so a compromise
regarding the size of these images must be made.
- Requires human intervention to get an HTMX file from the
TeX source (the sample above took me about 10 minutes).