Selathco 0.91 Documentation Previous Next

Put you texts
on the Web!

1. Introduction

Selathco (pronounced as "se-laat-ko") is an acronym for Simple Extensible LaTeX To HTML Converter. It is a program which reads a LaTeX source file and converts all known (i.e built-in or user created) commands to the appropriate HTML tags.

Example: a simple list conversion
LaTeX source... ...is converted to HTML... ...which is shown as
\begin{itemize}
\item First
\item Second
\item {\em Third}
\item \foo
\end{itemize}

<UL> 
<LI> First
<LI> Second
<LI> <EM> Third </EM>
<LI> <FONT COLOR="RED">
<B>\foo</B><FONT>
</UL>
  • First
  • Second
  • Third
  • \foo

All commands unknown to Selathco are simply copied in bold red to the output. Thanks to its extensibility, Selathco allows the user to define how to convert any (new) LaTeX command.

1.1 Examples of converted texts

  1. Z. Kotala, P. Toman: Java
  2. Studentske sborniky

1.2 What's new

Changes from 0.9 to 0.91:
  • Removed old (slow) parser
    Only the new parser based on finite automaton is included.
  • Fixed verbatim environment
    \begin{verbatim}...\end{verbatim} works well now.
  • Minor bug fixes

Changes from 0.85 to 0.9:

  • Much faster parsing
    Parser runs now 5-40 times faster. Example: Java book LaTeX sources (250 kB) were converted to HTML (385 kB) in 57 seconds using Microsoft JVM on Pentium 133MHz/48MB RAM.
  • New graphics user interface
    GUI yet simplifies options setup (command line mode is also further supported).
  • Scripting
    Simple LaTeX command handling can be also defined with no programming.
  • Modified and new command line parameters
    Run Selathco with -h option for more info.
  • JDK 1.2 compliancy
    Selathco has been tested with JDK1.1, JDK1.2 and Microsoft JVM (jview).
  • Creation of support files
    Arrow images (arrow_prev.gif and arrow_next.gif), Selathco logo, stylesheet.css and index.html files are created/copied to destination directories.
  • Documentation enhancements
    Restructured, more pictures added, ...
  • Bug fixes
    Handlers (should) produce valid HTML documents, envirnoments work as blocks now, typefaces are opened/closed correctly in HTML tables, etc.

1.3 TODO list

  • Clean spaghetti-code of command handlers - also covers:
    • implementation of "counters",
    • creation of API for "environments", ...
  • Implement math support a la latex2html (pictures).
  • Define some more commonly-used commands and environments.

1.4 Download

Selathco is a freeware - you may download and use it under the conditions described in the Readme file.

Download: (documentation is included)

Send bug reports, questions and comments to: Petr.Toman@pinknet.cz.