Terminatex

Display beautiful, high-fidelity LaTeX expressions and web images directly in your terminal.

terminatex is a Python utility that renders any LaTeX string or web image and displays it in modern terminals, providing a seamless way to visualize mathematical formulas and remote images without leaving your command-line environment.

Features

• High-Quality LaTeX Rendering using matplotlib
• Display web images from any URL
• True-color terminal display via term-image
• Customizable LaTeX color options
• Simple and intuitive API

Requirements

• Python 3.8+
• A modern terminal that supports true color (24-bit) and terminal graphics protocol
  • Recommended on Windows: Windows Terminal
  • Recommended on macOS: iTerm2, WezTerm
  • Recommended on Linux: Konsole, WezTerm, kitty

Installation

Install terminatex from PyPI:

pip install terminatex

Usage

Here's a complete example demonstrating how to render both LaTeX and a web image directly in your terminal:

# examples.py

from terminatex import display, display_from_url

def main():
    """
    Demonstrates both LaTeX and URL-based image rendering in the terminal using terminatex.
    """

    # --- 1. Display LaTeX from a string ---

    # Render Euler's Identity using white color
    print("--- Rendering LaTeX: Euler's Identity (in white) ---")
    display(r"e^{i\pi} + 1 = 0", color='white')

    # Render the Quadratic Formula in cyan
    print("\n--- Rendering LaTeX: The Quadratic Formula (in cyan) ---")
    display(r"x = \frac{-b \pm \sqrt{b^2 - 4ac}}{2a}", color='cyan')

    # --- 2. Display an image from a URL ---

    # Render an image from the web: E = MC² illustration
    print("\n--- Rendering Image from URL: E = MC² ---")
    image_url = "https://media.istockphoto.com/id/515369312/id/vektor/kesetaraan-energi-massal.jpg?s=612x612&w=0&k=20&c=bvDzBI-X3joclfryFpMAhGDyD2-3nf6Y8wprtT0k7YU="
    display_from_url(image_url)

    print("\nDone.")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

How It Works

For LaTeX (display):

• matplotlib renders your LaTeX string into a high-resolution PNG image
• This image is saved to a temporary file in your operating system's temp directory

For URLs (display_from_url):

• requests fetches the image data from the web
• The downloaded data is written to a temporary file

Display:

• In both cases, the path to the temporary file is passed to the term-image library
• term-image intelligently detects your terminal's capabilities and draws the image directly in your console

Cleanup:

• Immediately after the image is drawn, the temporary file is deleted to avoid cluttering your disk

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.