About
The latex2png script is a tool for parsing LaTeX snippets into png images. It comes in three flavors, a shell-script, a perl-script and a Matlab-script. The three scripts perform the same tasks and depending on your needs you will find one or many very useful.
License
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, click here.
Examples
| Description | Code | Image |
|---|---|---|
| Alternating Series | here | here |
| Array | here | here |
| Gaussian distribution PDF | here | here |
| Limits | here | here |
| Integral | here | here |
| Quadratic formula | here | here |
Prerequisites
All three scripts require
- A LaTeX distribution e.g. LaTeX, MikTeX or TeTeX
- dvipng
Installation
All three scripts require a LaTeX distribution and dvipng. The shell-script will only work in a Linux distribution, e.g. Ubuntu. I have only tested this script in Ubuntu Hardy Heron and in a custom Linux distribution from Carnegie Mellon University (linux.andrew.cmu.edu).
To install tetex (a LaTeX distribution) in Ubuntu type in a terminal
sudo apt-get install tetex-base tetex-extra
To install dvipng in Ubuntu type in a terminal
sudo apt-get install dvipng
Comment: In most Linux distributions, you will find LaTeX in /usr/bin/latex and dvipng in /usr/bin/dvipng. If any of these programs is available but not in those defaults folders you may modify the scripts to fit your needs.
latex2png
If you installed a LaTex distribution and dvipng, you are ready to go. Move the script to the location of your choice.
latex2png.pl
For latex2png.pl, the Perl-version of the script, you also need Perl. To install perl in Ubuntu type in a terminal
sudo apt-get install perl
The perl-script hasn't been tested on Windows, although it could potentially work. LaTeX and Perl is supported by and dvipng comes with MikTex.
latex2png.m
For latex2png.m, the Matlab-version of the script, you need Matlab. Matlab is a propietary scientific tool for Linux, Windows and MacOSX among others. I use Matlab a lot, and I thought about writing a function that would do the same job. I think that if you use Matlab Distributing Toolbox and/or run Matlab on a server you will find this script very useful. To get more information about Matlab, click here.
Download
To download the latest version of the scripts, click here
.