texmd 0.1.1

A simple library that translates LaTeX to Markdown.

texmd

A small library that converts LaTeX to Markdown. This package uses pylatexenc to parse the LaTeX expressions.

Currently, it supports converting inlined mathematical equations $...$, equation blocks (equation, equation*, align, align*, array, matrix, eqnarray, multline), title \title, sections (\section, \subsection, subsubsection); abstract content \abstract{...} (supported by Markdown block quote); in-text quotations ``...''; equation numbered labels are also supported. More will be introduced in later versions.

Installation

Run pip install texmd in the terminal.

Usage

This package allows you to load a .tex file directly.

from texmd import tex # Import the package

parser = tex.TexParser()
file_path = "<PATH_TO_TEX_FILE>"
tex_file = parser.load_file(file_path) # Load the file

The loaded file tex_file is type of texmd.texmd.TexDocument.

If you want to parse the LaTeX string directly you can also do

tex_expr = "<TEX_EXPR>"
tex_file = parser.parse(tex_expr)

We can convert then it to Markdown by

document = parser.to_md(tex_file)

The output document is type of texmd.md.MdDocument. To output the document as Markdown syntax we can do

md = document.to_str()

and you can write it to a .md file.

Add BibTeX support

In order for the package to also process BibTeX we will have to load the .bib file.

parser.load_citations("<BIB_FILE_PATH>")

Customization

If you don't like the way the package write the Markdown, or you want to support custom LaTeX expressions, you can use the API parser.set_converter with a specific sub-type of texmd.tex.TexNode.

For example you want to set a new converter for text node.

class TextNodeConverter(Converter):
    """ A converter for LaTeX text nodes. """

    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__(None)

    def convert(self, node: TexTextNode) -> Generator[MdNode]:
        def _():
            yield MdText(text=node.text)
        return _()

converter = TextNodeConverter()
parser.set_converter(TexTextNode, '', converter)

The default Citation converter is implemented as follows,

class CiteConverter(Converter):
    """ A converter for LaTeX cite nodes. """

    def __init__(self, parser: 'TexParser'):
        super().__init__(parser)

    def convert(self, node: TexMacroNode) -> Generator[MdNode]:
        def write_author(author: bib.Author) -> str:
            first_abbr = author.first_name[0] + '.' if author.first_name else ''
            middle_abbr = author.middle_name[0] + '.' if author.middle_name else ''
            return f"{first_abbr} {middle_abbr} {author.last_name}"
        
        def write_entry(entry: bib.Entry) -> str:
            content: List[str] = [*(write_author(author) for author in entry.authors), entry.title, entry.year]
            return ", ".join(content)

        def _():
            chars: TexTextNode = node.children[0].children[0]
            cite_names = chars.text.replace(' ', '').split(',')
            citations = (self.parser._get_citation(name) for name in cite_names)
            citations = (write_entry(entry) for entry in citations if entry)
            yield MdText(text="(*" + ", ".join(citations) + "*)")
        return _()

If you want a different style you can implement a new one and load it via

class YourCiteConverter(Converter)
    ...

converter = YourCiteConverter(parser)
parser.set_converter(TexMacroNode, 'cite', converter)

And you can obtain the citation entries via texmd.tex.TexParser._get_citation in the format of texmd.bib.Entry.