LaTeX2Web, a web authoring and publishing system
LaTeX2Web, a web authoring and publishing system
If you see this, something is wrong
To get acquainted with the document, the best thing to do is to select the "Collapse all sections" item from the "View" menu. This will leave visible only the titles of the top-level sections.
Clicking on a section title toggles the visibility of the section content. If you have collapsed all of the sections, this will let you discover the document progressively, from the top-level sections to the lower-level ones.
Generally speaking, anything that is blue is clickable.
Clicking on a reference link (like an equation number, for instance) will display the reference as close as possible, without breaking the layout. Clicking on the displayed content or on the reference link hides the content. This is recursive: if the content includes a reference, clicking on it will have the same effect. These "links" are not necessarily numbers, as it is possible in LaTeX2Web to use full text for a reference.
Clicking on a bibliographical reference (i.e., a number within brackets) will display the reference.
Speech bubbles indicate a footnote. Click on the bubble to reveal the footnote (there is no page in a web document, so footnotes are placed inside the text flow). Acronyms work the same way as footnotes, except that you have the acronym instead of the speech bubble.
By default, discussions are open in a document. Click on the discussion button below to reveal the discussion thread. However, you must be registered to participate in the discussion.
If a thread has been initialized, you can reply to it. Any modification to any comment, or a reply to it, in the discussion is signified by email to the owner of the document and to the author of the comment.
The blue button below that says "table of contents" is your tool to navigate in a publication.
The left arrow brings you to the previous document in the publication, and the right one brings you to the next. Both cycle over the publication list.
The middle button that says "table of contents" reveals the publication table of contents. This table is hierarchical structured. It has sections, and sections can be collapsed or expanded. If you are a registered user, you can save the layout of the table of contents.
First published on Thursday, Feb 27, 2025 and last modified on Friday, Jul 25, 2025
I am normally hidden by the status bar
Everything in LaTeX2Web revolves around the internal model of the document.
The model is object oriented. Each class corresponds roughly to a specific component of a document: paragraph, list, table, etc... , and is also linked to a document description language.
Each class implements at least one of the following methods:
Three document description languages are currently supported:
Document objects are not created from HTML, because HTML is such a general purpose language that we cannot fit general HTML code into one of the existing classes of the document model.
All classes do not export to markdown code because the language does not have all the features of the document model.
LaTeX code and the document model can be converted in both directions. In LaTeX2Web, there are specific extensions to the LaTeX language which correspond to specific web widgets.
This is a very concise description of how LaTeX2Web works, but it is helpful for understanding some of the advanced features of LaTeX2Web.
You can create a new document using the Start from a sample document... menu item of the Help menu. Select the “LaTeX minimal document” in the list. You will be prompted for a title (which cannot be changed afterward) and the number of authors. LaTeX2Web will generate fake authors for you; you can always edit them later.
You can upload a zip archive of your project to the server. First, select the “Upload” item in the menu bar. After that, you will be asked to provide some front matter information. There are two options:
Once the info is given, you can proceed with the upload itself. You will have two options for the document source language: LaTeX or Markdown.
The following bitmap formats are supported
The only vector image format supported on the Web is SVG.
PDF and EPS file formats are not supported. If you upload files with this file format, you will be offered the option to convert them on the server. Please avoid this, as it will unnecessarily stress the server’s resources. We advise you to use one of the many PDF to raster converters that exist before uploading media.
LaTeX2Web supports mp4 videos.
LaTeX2Web lets you upload CSV files as data sources.
LaTeX2Web lets you upload media after the document creation. It can be a single file or a zip archive of media files.
You can access this feature either from the action menu in the dashboard, or from the “View” menu of the corresponding web page.
Once the document source is created on the server, you are re-directed to your dashbord. Here is a snapshot.
Here you have the list of all the document you own. If the document has been exported to a web page, clicking on its title will display the page. At the right, you have the action menu, which lists the actions you can perform on you document.
If you select the “Import” action, the server will create a document model from the source code that you have provided. This model has two main characteristics:
The document hierarchy is defined by the sectioning commands. The top-level sectioning command defines the document’s top level. Sections below this level must belong to a section that is higher in the hierarchy. As a consequence, there cannot be a lower-level section before the first top-level section. This kind of section would typically have a section number in LaTeX which begins with a zero, which does indicate that it is out of place.
Every element of the document is an object with properties and methods. Sections are such objects. Paragraphs are also objects. Theorems are also objects.
Document objects are organized hierarchically. A theorem can contain a paragraph, and not the other way. Theorems are actually quite versatile objects and can include figures, equations, etc...
There are three document languages in LaTeX2Web:
Most document object types have a version in each of the three languages. Depending on the language, the objects implement at least one of the following methods:
Specifically, as detailed in figure 1:
In this section, we typically import a model from the LaTeX source.
In the snapshot, you can see that there is also a “Split import” option in the action menu. This option is for large documents (more than 25 pages). It splits the import process into several import subtasks. When all subtasks have been performed, you can assemble the result as an object, one level higher in the hierarchy. This is recursive, and at the top level you assemble the document model itself.
Front matter You can edit your front matter info (affiliations, emails, etc...) on the dedicated page. Know that to make the changes effective, you need to (re-)import you document to the model. If you work on a large document, it is better to edit the front matter data before importing.
Debug If errors are notified after the import process, you can access the document log from the action menu to get some information on what happened. Import errors can be fixed only by editing the source code.
Once you have created a model, you can export it to a LaTeX2Web page. To do so, use the action menu for your document and select “Export to HTML”. The HTML code for your document will be created and you will be re-directed to the corresponding web page.
If all goes well, you will be greeted with a green notification. If there was some errors, you will see a red error notification. To fix the error(s), you will need to edit your document. If your document was imported from an existing LaTeX document, we advise you to have the PDF version, as created by LaTeX, as a reference.
There are two ways to edit a document:
If you have import errors, you must fix them within the source code. If you want to fix HTML export issues, you can either edit the source code, or edit the model with our Inline Editor.
The source code editor works like any code editor. By contrast, the Inline Editor offers a more visual and granular experience. The pro side of the Inline Editor is that it is very flexible. The con is that, if you re-import the model from source code, the changes will be lost.
As a general rule, inspect the source code to look for structural problems. This the case, typically, if a macro has not been well defined or not well executed. The macros are not accessible from the inline editor. Eveything that is outside the body of the document is parsed at import time, and is not a part of the document model itself. As a consequence, any change on this part of the document must be done in the source code (which is saved in the database). Check also if your packages are supported by LaTeX2Web (you can access the info from the action menu).
Tip Actually, you can export the changes made in the Inline Editor to the LaTeX code. See the help on the Inline Editor and notably the save and restore section.
LaTeX2Web provides an online editor for your source code that is based on the Ace editor. Most of the interface of the code editor is the same in all editors available in LaTeX2Web: source code editor, inline editor and discussion editor.
The source code editor can be accessed for you document in two ways:
For more details on the source code editor, please refer to the help on the source code editor.
You can access the Inline Editor for a document in two ways:
Inline edit item in the Action menu for your documentInline edit item in the View menuAfter entering the edit mode, the Inline Editer in invoked simpling by clicking anywhere in the document main content (this exludes the front matter and bibliography). Once this is done, you are presented with a dialog which displays a list of the document objects that you can edit from the clicked position. This list features all the document objects that contain the clicked object. Typically, you will click on a paragraph. Most often, it will be included in section, which may be included in another one. Another possibility is that you clicked in a paragraph that belongs to a theorem. To edit an equation, click on it.
For more details, see the the help on the Inline Editor.
First, take a look at your document’s log, either from the dasboard or from the page view.
In the web page, text in red that says Label xxx not found indicates that the reference for a \ref command (or similar) was not found. In general, the problem should be tracked inside the source code editor.
In you see an equation with red commands inside, this means that the command was not understood by MathJax, the equation renderer. This maybe due to a faulty macro (in which case you should use the source editor), or by an unexpected space between the command and its parameter, for instance, in which case it is best to edit the equation in the Inline Editor.
If you see red text with a yellow background, this is math that MathJax totally failed to render. Try the Inline Editor first, and then the source code editor in case there was a bad macro, for instance. Below is garbage math:
(1)
Here, the closing statement \end{array} is missing.
For reasonably sized chunks of content, you can create, edit and delete parts of your document right from the Inline Editor. This manual was mostly written using the Inline Editor. As explained in the help on the Inline Editor, you can create, edit and delete objects with it, all of it interactively. The granularity of the Inline Editor lets you operate at any level of your document.
Handling bibliography in LaTeX is a wild ride, and it may happen that LaTeX2Web chokes on some unknown bibliography commands. You can edit the bibliography in two ways.
You will have the opportunity to edit the whole of your bibliography. To do so, eiher select “Edit bibliography” from the action menu in the dashboard, or do it directly from the view menu.
You edit a bibliography item by clicking on its title in the complete item list.
Once you have done the editing, you can export the changes to HTML. This means, that normally, you will not have to re-export the whole document. If this fails, however, you can export the whole document.
Note: if you re-import your document, the changes will be lost.
You can edit bibliography items individually if you are in edit mode, i.e. the Inline Editor is activated. To do so, click an item, edit it, and save. While this is quite flexible, it has not been as much battle-tested as the global bibliography editor.
This is currently unsupported. You can, however, upload a .bib file to the project that will replace all of the bibliography date. This can be done from the page of the global bibliography editor.
If you have not provided suitable front matter before importing the model, do it now. You will have to re-import and re-export the document.
This information is used by search engines and social media. You should provide the following textual information
After that,you will be invited to chose an image that will represent your document in search engines and social media. This must be one of the image files available in the document project. If you do not find a suitable image, this the opportunity to upload an image to your project and use it for this purpose. If you do nothing, the LaTeX2Web icon will be used.