jupytexmagic 0.1.0

This is the jupytexmagic module.

Why jupytex?

This is a python package for rendering LaTeX in Jupyter notebook with native rendering capabilities. Jupyter uses MathJax to render LaTeX inside of Markdown cells, which is fine for most use cases; however, this does not provide the full set of tools that LaTeX has to offer (e.g. tikzpictures, complex figures). What we want is the ability to write content using Jupyter for dynamic content while not sacrificing the beauty of native LaTeX.

How Does it Work?

This is a custom ipython magic plugin which allows users to create a new code cell, placing %%tex at the top and then put all of their LaTeX source code afterwards. Running the cell compiles the code into .svg format which is displayed following the cell.

Jupytex uses pdflatex to compile your cell's code into PDF format, then pdfcrop to crop the content, and pdf2svg to convert the PDF to .svg format. Then this is displayed using the IPython module. The compilation is fast, and has the upside of your LaTeX not needing to be rendered with Javascript when viewed on the web.

The .svg format is great because it doesn't lose any definition upon zooming in on the compiled LaTeX and you can highlight text with your cursor, which you cannot do with normal image formats like PNG/JPEG.

To load the module in ipython use: get_ipython().register_magic_function(tex, 'cell')

Current Limitations

Because jupytex presents the compiled LaTeX in .svg format, it assumes a standard page layout. Currently texify() crops to content; although there are slight things that are off about the margins. The goal is to fix this in the next release!

Tests directory

Currently this directory contains screenshots but no automated tests. Some ideas for testing could be to use selenium for screenshotting and comparing images with known working versions.

Example Runs