When Hyperlatex processes the \documentclass{class} command, it
tries to read the Hyperlatex package files siteinit.hlx,
init.hlx, and class.hlx in this order. These package
files implement most of Hyperlatex's functionality using LaTeX-style
macros. Hyperlatex looks for these files in the directory
.hyperlatex in the user's home directory, and in the
system-wide Hyperlatex directory selected by the system administrator
(or whoever installed Hyperlatex). siteinit.hlx contains the
standard definitions for the system-wide installation of Hyperlatex,
the package class.hlx (where class is one of
article, report, book etc) define the commands
that are different between different LaTeX classes.
System administrators can modify the default behavior of Hyperlatex by modifying siteinit.hlx. Users can modify their personal version of Hyperlatex by creating a file ~/.hyperlatex/init.hlx with definitions that override the ones in siteinit.hlx. Finally, all these definitions can be overridden by redefining macros in the preamble of a document to be converted.
To change the default depth at which a document is split into nodes,
the system administrator could change the setting of htmldepth
in siteinit.hlx. A user could define this command in her
personal init.hlx file. Finally, we can simply use this command
directly in the preamble.