Making hypertext documents from TeX

If you want on-line hypertext with a (La)TeX source, probably on the World Wide Web, there are four technologies to consider:

1. Direct (La)TeX conversion to HTML;
2. Use Texinfo, and use the info viewer, or convert the texinfo to HTML;
3. Use Adobe Acrobat, which will preserve your typesetting perfectly (see Making Acrobat documents from LaTeX);
4. The hyperTeX conventions (standardised \special commands); there are supporting macro packages for Plain TeX and LaTeX).

The HyperTeX project extended the functionality of all the LaTeX cross-referencing commands (including the table of contents) to produce \special commands which are parsed by DVI processors conforming to the HyperTeX guidelines; it provides general hypertext links, including those to external documents.

The HyperTeX specification says that conformant viewers/translators must recognize the following set of \special commands:

href:

html:<a href = "href_string">

name:

html:<a name = "name_string">

end:

html:</a>

image:

html:<img src = "href_string">

base_name:

html:<base href = "href_string">

The href, name and end commands are used to do the basic hypertext operations of establishing links between sections of documents.

Further details are available on http://arXiv.org/hypertex/; there are two commonly-used implementations of the specification, a modified xdvi and (recent releases of) dvips. Output from the latter may be used in recent releases of ghostscript or Acrobat Distiller.