[HN Gopher] Show HN: Latex.to - LaTeX to image converter running...
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Show HN: Latex.to - LaTeX to image converter running in the browser
I've made a website to easily share a LaTeX math formula. - The
image is created in the browser (i.e. the LaTeX is not send to a
server for rendering) - Native share dialog (share via WhatsApp
etc.) - Extra keyboard buttons for symbols like "$" or "\" on
mobile - Share via png or unicode Demo video:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/fGuTns5Nt9Q Please let me know any
feedback on how to improve the website.
Author : Wdorf
Score : 62 points
Date : 2024-10-29 14:17 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (latex.to)
(TXT) w3m dump (latex.to)
| Cieric wrote:
| Shorts link didn't work for me, here is the normal player link
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGuTns5Nt9Q
|
| I'm not to familiar with LaTeX so I much prefer a WYSIWYG editor.
| I mainly use things like wolframalpha's editor to really get a
| good representation of what I need.
|
| I know something like that might be out of scope for something
| like this, but you could potentially do preprogrammed buttons
| like having a sqrt button insert "\sqrt{}" to the cursor
| position.
| Wdorf wrote:
| Thank you very much for your feedback, I will look into adding
| more keyboard buttons like "\sqrt{}"
| programjames wrote:
| There's a similar feature on AoPS:
|
| https://aops.com/texer
| mgt19937 wrote:
| Cool project! I like the idea of easily sharing LaTeX formulas.
| It's impressive how smooth it works right in the browser.
|
| I've always thought compiling LaTeX in WebAssembly would be a
| tough nut to crack, so I was curious if that's what you'd done
| here. Turns out you're using KaTeX.
|
| Have you considered any WebAssembly approaches?
| jszymborski wrote:
| Not OP, but do you mind me asking what advantages you hope to
| achieve by using WebAssembly rather than KaTeX?
| trurl42 wrote:
| Well, for one, KaTeX doesn't do "LaTeX" but a limited subset
| of the TeX equation syntax. As such, it can't handle more
| complicated macros or typesetting anything apart from
| equations.
| Wdorf wrote:
| Thank you for your positive feedback.
|
| KaTeX does not support all LaTeX features but initializes very
| quickly.
|
| LaTeX via WebAssembly supports more features but might need
| longer to initialize.
|
| There's an existing WebAssembly project:
| https://www.swiftlatex.com
| red_trumpet wrote:
| There is TikZJax[1], which apparently compiles TeX to
| WebAssembly, to run TikZ in the browser.
|
| [1] https://tikzjax.com/
| dunham wrote:
| I played with web2js a couple of years ago. TeX ends up being
| a 500kb WASM file (88kb gzipped).
|
| The LaTeX format file or the memory image after LaTeX is
| loaded are a bit bigger though (2.3 MB and 6.3MB gzipped,
| respectively).
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| How does it work? Are you shipping a wasm latex distribution?
| Wdorf wrote:
| LaTeX: https://katex.org
|
| Image generation: https://github.com/bubkoo/html-to-image
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| Okay, so it's not LaTeX, just math typesetting that looks
| like LaTeX and takes LaTeX input.
|
| I'm more interested in solutions that work with the broader
| LaTeX ecosystem (like SiUnitX or amsmath).
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| Mathjax does support a whole bunch of common latex math
| related packages [1]. SiUnitX is notably missing from the
| inbuilt extensions, but a port to version 2 is available
| [2]. Should be updated to version 3.
|
| [1] https://docs.mathjax.org/en/latest/input/tex/extensions
| /inde...
|
| [2] https://github.com/mathjax/MathJax-third-party-
| extensions
| Wdorf wrote:
| Thank you, I wasn't aware of these extensions.
| fweimer wrote:
| Ahh. I was confused for a moment why \def wasn't working.
| vzaliva wrote:
| Have you considered translating formulae to MathML for rendering?
| einpoklum wrote:
| It looks like OP is already doing that. Or rather, OP calls
| katex (https://katex.org/) to get MathML and HTML; then renders
| the HTML to a raster image. But he's throwing the MathML away.
| Wdorf wrote:
| KaTeX has a build in MathML feature, but I haven't yet looked
| into it for rendering.
|
| The "Share text" functionality of the website uses KaTeX's
| MathML feature as an intermediate step.
| einpoklum wrote:
| > Please let me know any feedback on how to improve the website.
|
| 1. You can give credit where it is due - on the website, to katex
| and the HTML-to-image renderer library/engine. 2. You could offer
| any of the three possible outputs: Raster image, HTML, MathML -
| for exporting/sharing/downloading.
| Wdorf wrote:
| Thank you for your feedback.
|
| I've just added the links to both projects in the info modal.
|
| I will look into adding HTML and MathML exports in the next
| version.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| I'd be very interested in the opposite! Lots of scanned or legacy
| images that would be nice to convert to LaTeX, or to create a
| robust PDF ingestion pipeline.
| Wdorf wrote:
| I could add a GPT based pdf to latex functionality in the
| future.
| sorenjan wrote:
| Like Mathpix?
|
| https://mathpix.com/
| BeetleB wrote:
| Mathpix is awesome. So far it has never gotten the output
| wrong. I even have it integrated into Emacs/org-mode.
| hextex wrote:
| Facebook's Nougat [1] should work with this, but not sure how
| much preprocessing is needed to yield good results with scanned
| copies of physical documents. Note that it outputs .mmd files
| (MultiMarkDown), but the equations and tables should (iirc)
| output plain LaTeX.
|
| 1: https://github.com/facebookresearch/nougat
| Wdorf wrote:
| This looks really interesting! I will definitely have a look.
| Vetch wrote:
| In addition to the already mentioned
| https://huggingface.co/facebook/nougat-base, I also highly
| recommend https://huggingface.co/stepfun-ai/GOT-OCR2_0. It
| might even be better.
| mcraiha wrote:
| 1. Add tooltips to the top icons 2. Support SVG output
| Wdorf wrote:
| Thank you, those are both very good suggestions I will look
| into!
| mindv0rtex wrote:
| I was recently trying to solve a similar problem but on desktop
| platforms. I don't want to depend on LaTeX, but I'd like to be
| able to generate equation images inside a C++ desktop
| application. I tried to make MathJax run via QuickJS and extract
| the SVG for rasterization. But I couldn't make MathJax run with
| QuickJS.
| rfdonnelly wrote:
| Kroki [1] supports TikZ and by extension: PGF [2] and LaTeX. It
| supports SVG, PDF, JPEG, and PNG outputs. Rendering is done on
| the server. URLs can be quite long since the source is embedded
| in the URL but you can use a URL shortener [3].
|
| [1]: https://kroki.io/ [2]: https://tikz.dev/ [3]:
| https://tinyurl.com/kroki-svg-example
| kreyenborgi wrote:
| For the other direction, there is
| https://detexify.kirelabs.org/classify.html :)
| coffeeri wrote:
| Even better is https://simpletex.cn/
| Ennea wrote:
| It feels like I am seeing more and more websites lately that have
| a favicon that is deliberately broken, and I'm not sure why this
| appears to be a thing that is somehow gaining traction.
| Wdorf wrote:
| I will design a proper favicon! I think I implemented the
| current placeholder according to
| https://stackoverflow.com/a/13416784
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(page generated 2024-10-29 23:00 UTC)