Variation with HTML Versions


The Hypertext Mark-up Language (HTML) is an evolving standard, with different versions supporting different features. In order to make your documents viewable by the widest possible audience, you should use the most advanced HTML version with widely-accepted usage.


Sometimes it is known that the audience, for which a specific document is intended, has limited browser capabilities. Or perhaps special extended capabilities are known to be available. The LATEX2HTML translation may be customised to suit the available functionality.


Other HTML versions and extensions supported by LATEX2HTML are described below. See the description of the -html_version command-line option switch.

* Version 2.0
This provides only the functionality of the HTML 2.0 standard. There is little provision for aligning headings, paragraphs or images nor for super/sub-scripts to be generated. Images are created for tables and other environments that use <TABLE> tags with HTML 3.2; e.g. eqnarray and equation with equation numbering.

* i18n (internationalised fonts) Version 2.1
This extension (formerly known as HTML version 2.1) provides extensions for internationalisation. Most importantly, the default character set is no longer ISO-8859-1 but ISO-10646Unicode). This is a 16-bit character set and can thus display a much larger set of characters. There are also provisions for bidirectional languages (e.g. in Arabic the text is written from right to left, but numerals from left to right), and provisions in HTML to determine the character set and the language used.

Not all of the symbols are available in TEX, LATEX2HTML, or any browser yet available. However the `i18n' extension to LATEX2HTML is in preparation for when such browsers do become available, and such characters will be required in Web-accessible documents.

* math (HTML3 model) Version 3.1
This extension (formerly referred to as HTML version 3.1) adds support for the HTML-Math model, originally part of the proposed HTML 3.0 standard, see above. The only available browser which can display this mark-up is Arena. Originally developed by the World Wide Web Consortium as a test-bed browser, it is no longer supported by them.

There has been a recent proposal for a Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) from the W3C Math Working Group. This would suggest that the HTML-Math model is unlikely ever to be adopted; better things being expected in the near future using MathML.

See also another page for a discussion the the mechanisms available with LATEX2HTML for handling mathematical equations and expressions.