TeX, LaTeX and Friends

1:21 AM

I think tex4ht is ignored by Latex community. This makes me wonder how folks translate all their Latex document to the web then? Since there is no other option that I can see. Or may be no body cares about HTML here and only pdf is what is important? I think this is a big mistake.

Joseph Wright

7:16 AM

@Nasser Not really - tex4ht did have to be taken over after the original author passed away, which obviously caused some issues

@Nasser Remember that for publishers, a likely workflow is to store data not as LaTeX but as XML, and to create LaTeX, HTML, etc. as derived formats

@Nasser Also, recall that what TeX is good at is typesetting and carefully-controlled output: HTML, even with modern CSS, simply isn't like that (reflowing = no real control over exact placement of material)

Nasser

@JosephWright I do not understand when you say for publishers. Are you saying someone who wants to convert a latex document to html is a publisher? I am talking about every person who uses latex all day. Don't they need to convert these to HTML? I guess many do not. And that is why there is little interest in tex4ht

Joseph Wright

@Nasser I'm talking about people with money who use LaTeX a lot for their business: there is a lot of LaTeX use that 'end users' never see

@Nasser The usual answer here is that if you know in advance that your end target is not just PDF but also HTML then using LaTeX (or even ConTeXt) as an input format is probably the wrong choice

@Nasser Note that ConTeXt scores better here, as they've got more of a consistent system and have been able as part of MkIV development to deprecate some 'TeX-like' input idioms that are hard to convert to HTML (\item and \section-like concepts are obvious examples)

Nasser

But this is the problem: What if you want output to be both PDF and HTML? And also use math? There is no other option than Latex/tex4ht/pdflatex for me. I do not know Context. Is it better than latex/tex4ht? Any examples of its HTML conversion?

Joseph Wright

@Nasser I don't know what your full context is: it sounds like professional work, in which case surely you have a budget for something like 3B2

Nasser

I am student at school. I use latex for HW's and projects. that is all.

Joseph Wright

7:29 AM

@Nasser In that case, why do you need HTML output?

@Nasser Or at least why can't you use e.g. Pandoc

Nasser

Because I like to browse my HW's on the web. Much easier than having to download a PDF for each small document. Imaging if wikipedia was all pdf files and no HTML? There is advantage for each format. Looked at pandoc, hard to do math. Nothing better than latex for math.

Joseph Wright

@Nasser Like I say, some of the issues arise from the twin facts that people who need to spend money on HTML conversion don't do it using TeX but using (very expensive) commercial publishing platforms, and the fact that the author of tex4ht died and finding a volunteer team to take over is not so easy

@Nasser Also, as I've tried to indicate, the design LaTeX isn't ideal for conversion to HTML: you need more structure and less user flexibility (or at least it has to be carefully thought through)

Nasser

But what other software is there, that can do as good math as latex and generate to HTML? I know of nothing that can do what you are saying. If I have one million dollar to buy this software, where is it? What is it called? Does 3B2 do better math than latex? I tried many software, and they are all bad. never tried 3B2.

Joseph Wright

@Nasser 'Better' is a tricky term: 3B2 is derived from an older product which used to use TeX 'behind the scenes'. I've not seen it myself, but I know it's used for a lot of journal publishing. What those people are after is automation: hundreds or thousands of manuscripts, PDF/HTML/database output without any human intervention, etc.

Nasser

7:44 AM

@JosephWright yes, I know this too about it. That is the problem, I know many good software that can target to HTML very well, as long as there is little to no math involved. indesign for example. When complex math comes in, then they all fall apart. I would use indesign, but it does not do math well at all (terrible equation editor software).

Joseph Wright

@Nasser InDesign is different: it's a GUI. Like I say, I've not seen 3B2 but as I understand it it's not a simple GUI for layout, it's an automation system. As such, input is auto-scraped from LaTeX/PDF/Word files into XML. It's really very different from an 'end user' package in that sense.

Nasser

Also tried frameMaker, good for technical, as long as little math involved.

Joseph Wright

@Nasser Again, you are thinking about single documents: the business end of HTML production is automated 'black box' systems for large scale conversion. That's where the money goes in.

@Nasser For serious maths, I'd be tempted to ask Barbara Beeton about what the AMS do

Nasser

@JosephWright You think AMS has some hidden software better than htlatex? :)

Joseph Wright

@Nasser No

@Nasser I suspect they hand-tidy into a known subset of LaTeX that works well with conversion to HTML

Nasser

7:51 AM

I did not know AMS publish to HTML much. Very few journals do.

Joseph Wright

@Nasser Depends on your area: all of the journals in chemistry have HTML versions, done using 3B2/ArborText mainly

@Nasser Taking a look at the AMS pages, I see they stick to PDF

@Nasser I suspect one issue is that for very maths-heavy stuff the current HTML situation (MathML, etc.) is not developed enough that professionals in the area want to risk such things. PDF works for them.

Nasser

You see, I told you :) That is the problem. Wikipedia went for HTML only (no pdf) and journals go for PDF using pdflatex. Hard to do both well.

Joseph Wright

@Nasser Like I say, different requirements (the AMS have to have the 'correct' output: Wikipedia isn't quite the same!)

@Nasser One problem is the nature of the output. If you look at Wikipedia, they use a lot of images for maths, but people like @DavidCarlisle are working on 'proper' maths support for browsers, etc. Until that is all standard to the point where you don't have to worry about it failing to load, it's very risky (in general) to produce a 'pure HTML' solution.

Nasser

@JosephWright I tried output mathml and render using mathjax. So no image for math. Very nice looking output. The problem is tex4ht has few bugs in its mathml outout, and some math was failing. I posted all these on this forum. The worst was that it could not do siunitx package. When I used \SI[], then the HTML will not even get generated ! So I swithed back to png for math, at least it works.

someone said the \SI[] problem was with mathjax and not tex4ht. But I have no idea. over my head. I just stopped using mathax for this reason.

tohecz

8:06 AM

... and after managing everything on time yester, no matter the strikes, I slept late today and missed the only two morning buses to the port :(

Nasser

@JosephWright here it is tex.stackexchange.com/questions/161907/…

Joseph Wright

@Nasser Problem there is that I've set up siuntx to do it's best to give useful output from tex4ht but you've surprised it by trying to use math mode!

@Nasser One thing people use tex4ht for is conversion to Word, and for that to work I have to force text mode (spacing weirdness in OpenOffice)

@Nasser I'm actually working on a new version of siunitx and this sort of thing is one of the reasons. The problem is partly that trying to support all possible outcomes is very tricky, at least with the way I initially defined \SI as working. (Back with the ConTeXt business: if I was starting from a blank slate life would be easier.)

Nasser

@JosephWright but I have to use \SI in math mode many times. like inside \begin{align} and such. Most of my use of it is inside math mode. I am engineering student, and so most of my equations have units :)

Joseph Wright

@Nasser No, you misunderstand me :-)

@Nasser The most common desire when converting to HTML seems to be to want a unit to come out 'just as text' but with superscripts/subscripts correct: \SI{10}{\square\metre} => 10 m2

@Nasser Like I say, I have a plan that I think addresses the issues, but it's non-trivial and I have other things on my plate (day job, for a start)

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TeX, LaTeX and Friends

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