Creating an Online Academic Portfolio with LaTeX and TeX4ht

This was originally asked on TeX.SX, the requirements being:

Any one know of a good script to turn a bibtex file into a nice academic portfolio that:

• links to electronic versions where known (from url or doi)
• works with local files (e.g. with bibdesk's format or otherwise)
• automatically creates a thumbnail of the first page
• and generally produces a polished web page suitable for showing off your work?

Well, I maintain my own online publication list by generating the HTML code from my BibT_eX, using BibL^aT_eX, Biber and T_eX4ht. So my answer to the above question was a quick modification of my own workflow, adding Ghostscript to the mix to generate thumbnail images of the papers. The output looks like this: (The publication lists can be split according to their types)

(BibL^aT_eX is a complete reimplementation of the bibliographic facilities provided by L^aT_eX in conjunction with BibT_eX. It’s very flexible, and many find it easier to deal with compared to the BST language. Biber is the replacement of the BibT_eX binary, for users of BibL^aT_eX.)

The source codes can be downloaded here as a .zip file. Further elaborations follow.

The Bibliography File

Back to the task at hand. First we have the BibT_eX file, the content of which is pretty much the norm, except that I used the custom BibL^aT_eX field to hold the local PDF file name. My publications.bib contains entries like:

@ARTICLE{Lim:Ranaivo:Tang:2011,
author = {Lim, Lian Tze and Ranaivo-Malan\c{c}on, Bali and Tang, Enya Kong},
title = {Low Cost Construction of a Multilingual Lexicon from Bilingual Lists},
journal = {Polibits},
year = {2011},
volume = {43},
pages = {45--51},
url = {http://polibits.gelbukh.com/2011_43/43-06.htm},
usera = {LLT-polibits.pdf}
}

The L^aT_eX Source File

Next is the portfolio.tex file, in which I set up a hook at every bibliography item to include the first page of the file pointed to by usera. I've also added a bibmacro called string+hyperlink, to make the publication title link to the url or doi field if these are available, as shown in this answer.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[backend=biber,bibstyle=authoryear,sorting=ydnt]{biblatex}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\bibliography{publications}
\usepackage{hyperref}

\ExecuteBibliographyOptions{doi=false,url=false}
\newbibmacro{string+hyperlink}[1]{%
\iffieldundef{url}{%
\iffieldundef{doi}{#1}{\href{http://dx.doi.org/\thefield{doi}}{#1}}}
{\href{\thefield{url}}{#1}}}
\DeclareFieldFormat*{title}{\usebibmacro{string+hyperlink}{#1}}

\newbibmacro{usera}{%
\iffieldundef{usera}{}{%
\savefield*{usera}{\filename}%
\usebibmacro{string+hyperlink}{\includegraphics[width=100pt]{\filename}}\\}%
}
\AtEveryBibitem{\usebibmacro{usera}}

\begin{document}
\section{My Academic Portfolio}
\nocite{*}
\printbibliography[title={Articles},type={article}]
\printbibliography[title={Conference Proceedings},type={inproceedings}]
\end{document}

T_eX4ht Configuration File

I then set up a T_eX4ht personal configuration file, called portfolio.cfg (included in the .zip file). It contains some simple CSS, and tells T_eX4ht to convert the first page of the local PDFs into PNGs using ghostscript. (So yes you will need to have ghostscript installed for this to work.)

Generating the HTML

Right, now we can run the following commands:

$  htlatex portfolio "portfolio"
$  biber portfolio
$  htlatex portfolio "portfolio"

And you should then get portfolio.html, which you can further embellish with more CSS. Well that was fun!

Use of LaTeX in Industry

A question on TeX.SX about “How is L^aT_eX used in industry and what are some examples?” has garnered over 6k views since posted yesterday. I had mentioned during my MOSC talk that L^aT_eX would be very useful in scenarios where some printable content has to be batch-generated or on-the-fly, and now some actual real life examples are given in the answers.

For example, this website allows users to query transportation timetables and returns the results as a pdfTeX-generated PDF:

And here’s another schedule generated by another German transportation website (PDF):

If you read the other answers, you’ll see what and how L^aT_eX is used in other companies (besides academic publishers). For example, this answer by Peter Flynn:

As a LaTeX consultancy, we have produced classes and styles for many organisations, including companies, government departments, and non-profits. A London auction house uses LaTeX to generate invoices; an electronic systems training company uses LyX and LaTeX to create their course workbooks and white papers; a Dublin printer uses LaTeX for pharmaceutical labelling; a local government organisation uses TeX to generate the Register of Voters; a professional scientific association uses LaTeX for its regular series of technical reports; and of course we use it internally for client reports, newsletters, and invoicing.