Requirements

 
The translator makes use of several utilities all of which are freely available on most platforms. You may use Archie , or other Web-searching tools such as FTP search , to find the source code of any utilities you might need.

For the best use of L^ATEX2HTML you want to get the latest versions of all the utilities that it uses. (It will still work with earlier versions, but some special effects may not be possible. The specific requirements are discussed below.)

• Perl version 5.002, or later;
• DBM or NDBM, the Unix DataBase Management system;
• L^ATEX, meaning L^ATEX2_e at patchlevel 4, or later;
• dvips or dvipsk, at version 5.58 or later;
• Ghostscript at version 4.02 or later;
• the netpbm library of graphics utilities.

Perl should be compiled to use the csh or tcsh shell, though L^ATEX2HTML can also be made to work with the bash shell.

More specific requirements for using L^ATEX2HTML depend on the kind of translation you would like to perform, as follows:

1.

 L^ATEX commands but without equations, figures, tables, etc.

• Perl (version 4.0 - RCSfile: perl.c,v - Revision: 4.0.1.8 - Date: 1993/02/05 19:39:30 - Patch level: 36).
  Warning 1: You really do need Perl at patch level 36 or later.
  Versions of L^ATEX2HTML earlier than 0.7a4 work only with Perl 4 at patch level 36.
  Versions of L^ATEX2HTML up to V97.1 work both with Perl 4 at patch level 36 and Perl 5, though some of the packages may only work with Perl 5.
  No  version of L^ATEX2HTML will work with Perl 4 at earlier patch levels.
  Future versions, from V97.2 onwards, may require Perl 5 in order to operate at all.

  Warning 2:  Various aspects of Perl, which are used by L^ATEX2HTML, assume certain system commands to be provided by the operating system shell. If csh or tcsh is used to invoke L^ATEX2HTML then everything should work properly. Perl 5.003 eliminates this requirement on the shell.

  Warning 3:  Some of the packages which implement advanced features, such as the natbib and frames packages, require Perl 5.

   

• DBM or NDBM, the Unix DataBase Management system.

     

2.

L^ATEX commands with equations, figures, tables, etc.
As above plus ...

• latex;  
• dvips (version 5.516 or later) or dvipsk;  
• gs Ghostscript (version 2.6.1 works; versions from 3.33 onwards are preferable, up to at least 5.01);   
• The pbmplus or netpbm library. Some of the filters in those libraries are used during the PostScript to GIF conversion.

  

3.

Segmentation of large documents
If you wish to use this feature, you will have to upgrade your L^ATEX to L^ATEX2_e. Some other hyperlinking features also require L^ATEX2_e.

  

4.

Transparent inlined images
If you dislike the white background color of the generated inlined images then you should get either the netpbm library (instead of the older pbmplus) or install the giftrans filter by Andreas Ley <ley@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de> . Version 1.10.2 is known to work without problems, but later versions should also be OK.

 

If Ghostscript or the pbmplus (or netpbm) library are not available, it is still possible to use the translator with the -no_images option.

   
If you intend to use any of the special features of the translator then you have to include the html.sty file in any L^ATEX documents that use them.

      
Since by default the translator makes use of inlined images in the final HTML output, it would be better to have a viewer which supports the <IMG> tag, such as NCSA Mosaic or Netscape Navigator .
^97.1
Any browser which claims to be compatible with HTML 3.2 should meet this requirement.
^97.1
   
If only a character-based browser, such as lynx, is available, or if you want the generated documents to be more portable, then the translator can be used with the -ascii_mode option.