Subsections

• L^ATEX2HTML-NG
• Extended Capabilities in Web browsers

Proposals for Future Development:  

L^ATEX2HTML-NG

Developed by  Marcus Hennecke   this is a version of L^ATEX2HTML that addresses various issues, not currently handled in the best way by version V97.1. These include:

• validating the HTML output, so that only correctly nested tags, and their contents, can be produced by the translator;
• more TEX-like order of macro-expansion, so that macros and their expansions will produce exactly the results expected from the TEX implementation of L^ATEX;
• faster processing, by streamlining some of the current Perl code, and allowing shorter strings to be handled at any given time;
• customisation issues, allowing easier portability to Unix-like environments on other platforms.

This work was done before many of the improvements for V97.1 were available. It is intended that the above features will be merged with the current version of L^ATEX2HTML throughout the latter half of 1997.

The current version of L^ATEX2HTML-NG can be obtained from the developer's repository, in the directory http://cdc-server.cdc.informatik.th-darmstadt.de/~latex2html/ng-user . Beware that the files there are not compatible with those of the same name that come with the current version of L^ATEX2HTML.

Extended Capabilities in Web browsers

The following areas are the subject of active development within the Web community. Support within L^ATEX2HTML for these features is planned, as it becomes practicable to do so, and the manpower/expertise becomes available.

  

style-sheets:

proposals for a flexible mechanism to allow cascading (CSS) and DSSSL, within the next version of HTML, code-named Cougar .   

XML:

eXtensible Markup Language .   

MathML:

Mathematical Markup Language .   

CML:

Chemical Markup Language .  

Fonts:

further support for non-standard font encodings.  

Icons:

Alternative sets of icons for navigation buttons and other purposes.

For some background on these technologies read  Michel Goossens ' survey article ``Hyper-activity in the Web-world'' in CERN Computer Newsletter No. 227 , and browse  Axel Ramge 's site for ideas on how they could be used with L^ATEX2HTML.