exit run

The Translation Process

The system can be activated with a sequence of commands of the following form. 

                 latex      x            (or `tex x')
                 latex      x
                 latex      x
                 tex4ht     x
                 dvi-to-gif x
          

The three compilations with La(TeX) are needed to ensure proper links. The approach is illustrated in the following picture. 

                                  -- html
                                  |  files
        |----|            ------| |          ---------|
        |    |            |     | |          |        |
x.tex ----TeX ---- x.dvi----tex4ht|-|- x.ivd----|dvi- to-gif--- gif
         -----            ------- |          ---------    files
                                  |
                                  -- x.lg

x.tex
This is a source TeX/LaTeX/OtherTeX file that imports the style file TeX4ht.sty. The style file consists of commands for requesting hypertext features.

tex4ht
The output of TeX is a standard dvi file interleaved with special instructions for tex4ht to use. The special instructions come from requests made in the source file through commands of TeX4ht.

The utility tex4ht translates the dvi code into standard text, while obeying the requests it gets from the special instructions. The special instructions may request the creation of new files, insertion of html code, filtering of pictures, and so forth.

In the extreme case that the source code contains no commands of TeX4ht, tex4ht gets pure dvi code and it outputs (almost) plain text with no html commands in it.

x.ivd
This is a dvi file extracted from x.dvi, and it contains the pictures needed in the html files.

x.lg
This is a log file listing the pictures of x.ivd, the gif files that should be created, and user directives introduced through the `\Needs{...}' command.

If appropriately configured, it can be used as a script for directing the translation of the pictures, and for executing system commands requested by the user.