The hyperTeX project

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 at 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.

FAQ ID: Q-hypertex