Latex Preview

Quickly and effortlessly preview Latex equations, save them to a .gif file, copy them to clipboard, or drag them to a document.

Dependencies

The following packages are required.

• python3
• texlive (or any installation of latex)
• python3-gi
• gobject-introspection
• gir1.2-gtk-3.0
• dvipng

Alternatively, you can use docker to build a docker image from the supplied Dockerfile.

Installation

Simply clone this repository, or download it.

$ git clone https://github.com/sbacco/LatexPreview.git

On base system

If you have all the dependencies installed, you can run the program with,

$ cd LatexPreview
$ python3 latexpreview.py

With docker-compose, under X11

Edit requirements.txt to suit the TeX packages you wish to use. By default, only the Debian package texlive-science is installed, taking up 1.29GB of disk space. Installing texlive-full takes up approximately 8GB of disk space.

Ensure that you allow connections to your host's display from your internal network:

$ xhost +local:root

Create the docker image, and a configuration file:

$ cd LatexPreview
$ touch ~/.latexpreview.json
$ chmod 666 ~/.latexpreview.json
$ docker-compose build
$ docker-compose up

And run the app like so,

$ docker-compose start

Note: On systems not running on X11, it is still possible to run a local XServer and connect the app. The file docker-compose.yml needs to be edited to suit your needs. Instructions for Windows are coming soon.

Use

Every control is pretty much intuitive. Hover the mouse over a button to know its shortcut and what it does. You can resize the preview, change its color, copy the image to clipboard or save it.

You can also add extra packages for latex that will be used by the program (c.f. image above). The docker container comes with many extra latex packages preinstalled.

Hope you enjoy!