Subsections

- Proposals for Future Development:
- LATEX2`HTML`-NG
- Extended Capabilities in Web browsers

#
1998 to 1999

During this period large parts of LATEX2`HTML` have been overhauled and compatibility with Perl 4 broken once and for all. The 99.2 release is the first known to work out of the box on several UNIX systems as well as on Windows 95, 98, NT and OS/2. The number of supported LATEX packages is bigger than ever.

Thanks to Adalbert Perbandt for testing every second alpha/beta release of 99.2 on OS/2 and ensuring that things work ok there.

##
Proposals for Future Development:

## LATEX2`HTML`-NG

Developed by Marcus Hennecke this is a version of LATEX2`HTML` that addresses various issues, not currently handled in the best way by version V97.1. These include:

- validating the `HTML` output, so that only correctly nested tags, and their contents, can be produced by the translator;
- more TEX-like order of macro-expansion, so that macros and their expansions will produce exactly the results expected from the TEX implementation of LATEX;
- faster processing, by streamlining some of the current Perl code, and allowing shorter strings to be handled at any given time;
- customisation issues, allowing easier portability to Unix-like environments on other platforms.

Many of these features have been the inspiration for new code written for LATEX2`HTML` V98.1.

The current version of LATEX2`HTML`-NG can be obtained from the developer's repository, in the directory `http://saftsack.fs.uni-bayreuth.de/~latex2ht/ng-user`.
Beware that the files there are not compatible with those of the same name that come with the current version of LATEX2`HTML`.

## Extended Capabilities in Web browsers

The following areas are the subject of active development within the Web community. Limited support is available within LATEX2`HTML` for some of these features, using the `-html_version 4.0` command-line switch.

style-sheets:
  proposals for a flexible mechanism to allow cascading (CSS) and DSSSL, within `HTML` 4.0.
XML:
  eXtensible Markup Language.

MathML:
  Mathematical Markup Language.

CML:
  Chemical Markup Language.

Fonts:
  further support for non-standard font encodings.

Icons:
  Alternative sets of icons for navigation buttons and other purposes.

For some background on these technologies read Michel Goossens' survey article ``Hyper-activity in the Web-world'' in CERN Computer Newsletter No. 227, and browse Axel Ramge's site for ideas on how they could be used with LATEX2`HTML`.