Generating LaTeX Server Side - latex

I'm trying to build a service that accepts some string with LaTeX formatting and then returns a string with the LaTeX bits as pngs, or whatever else.
So, the idea is:
client sends a request containing: the point is that $sum_{n=1}^5 f(x)$ is a good estimate
server sends back the string: the point is that FORMULAS_HERE is a good estimate
I really have no idea where to begin getting the LaTeX converted. Naively, I assume I would just parse out the LaTeX bits and then do something to get a png/jpeg/etc... and then insert that into the response.
Googling around really reveals minimal information.
Currently, my simple server is built on node, but that's not really important. I can change languages if there's some magic solution out there. I honestly wish I could magically transform LaTeX into unicode and have it be perfectly seamless.
Question: How do I handle LaTeX on the server side?
- The goal is to then spit it back to the client so the text can be inlined relatively naturally (i.e. I could text my buddy Hey, what if $\chi(n)$ was considered independently? and it would be received formatted on the other end without begin a weird big picture blob).
Any advice on just a direction or set of packages/technologies/etc.. would be useful here.

Prepare your latex document with math and convert it using the excellent open-source ImageMagick
pdflatex formula.tex
convert -density 300 formula.pdf -quality 90 formula.png
The convert command used above is one of the ImageMagick tools. See documentation and numerous online resources for many options. The software has versions for all major platforms.
The input latex file should be prepared so that there is no background, margins, etc. For discussion of how to do that, see this post, and the source for it. The example above ultimately comes from there.
This is one way to write the formula.tex file used above, from the linked source.
\ifdefined\formula
\else
\def\formula{E = m c^2}
\fi
\documentclass[border=2pt]{standalone}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{varwidth}
\begin{document}
\begin{varwidth}{\linewidth}
\[ \formula \]
\end{varwidth}
\end{document}
There are other converters out there but you need not bother if you can use this.
I have to mention MathJax. It runs in a browser, via one-line JavaScript snippet. Should you ever migrate to a browser/mobile service this would be a perfect solution. Here is their one page tutorial.

Related

Octave: saving figure with greek letters and subscripts

I'm currently trying to save a stress vs. strain curve using Octave. On this plot, I want to include text showing the equation for calculating engineering stress and engineering strain. Both of these require greek letters (\sigma and \epsilon respectively) as well as subscripts for the formulae.
Currently, using print with -deps, -dpng, or any other device, it creates a file, however the greek letters appear as the words "sigma" and "epsilon", and wherever I have a subscript, such as 0, it just appears as "_0". This looks very unprofessional.
Since I'm generating some 25 graphs, I don't want to have to go through and do a screenshot for each one. Does octave support saving the generated figure as displayed? I intend to use the generated files in a LaTeX document later (preferably as png so I can email them separately too).
I've also tried changing the "graphics_toolkit" option between fltk and gnuplot however it doesn't seem to help.
Attached to this post is a screenshot of the desired results and the actual results.
I am currently "not allowed" to post images, so I'll link them:
http://i.imgur.com/Tjt5Ecn.png (screenshot, desired result) and http://i.imgur.com/SP3hekd.png (directly saved, actual result)
Does anyone know a good way to print a figure from Octave which includes greek characters and subscripts in the titles?
Since you plan to use your graph in a Latex document, generating the graphs with -depslatex and converting them to pdf is a good idea . (Results look slightly better than direct -dpdflatex).
With -depslatex, you can include Latex code in your figures that will be written to a separate tex file.
Note that you need to use double backslashes \\ to export a single backslash.
graphics_toolkit("gnuplot");
...
legend("$\\varepsilon$");
print(sprintf("graph%s_%d.eps", name, type), '-depslatex', '-S200,270', '-F:9');
system(sprintf("epstopdf graph%s_%d.eps", name, type));
On the Latex side, you then \input the tex file generated by Octave. On the plus side, since you need 25 graphs, you can automatize this process on both sides Octave and Latex.
\newcommand{\mygraph}[1]{%
\graphicspath{{./figures/}}
\resizebox{0.495\linewidth}{!}{\relscale{1.0}\small%
\input{./figures/#1.tex}
}%
}
\mygraph{graph1_1}
Here, a Latex command \mygraph is defined to scale and include a figure located in a subfolder.
(I am using Octave 4.0.0 with gnuplot 4.4 on Ubuntu 12)

Tools for converting LaTeX equations to Content MathML or OpenMath?

Do you know any open source tools or libraries (preferably Java, but that's not a strict requirement) in the GNU/Linux world that convert mathematical equations in LaTeX syntax to Content MathML or OpenMath?
I need to convert tons of equations in batch mode, so I'm not looking for interactive apps.
EDIT My focus is on the equations' semantics, so I cannot use Presentation MathML (unless there's a converter from Presentation MathML to Content MathML).
Thanks in advance!
This might be what you are looking for: SnuggleTeX
From the site:
SnuggleTeX is a 100% Java library for converting (a reasonable subset of) LaTeX into XHTML + MathML.
SnuggleTeX can attempt to convert input LaTeX to Content MathML by first creating Enhanced Presentation MathML and then processing that. In many ways, this part of the process is relatively simple since most of the semantic structure has already been inferred (though might not necessarily make any sense).
You can also use an online equation editor WIRIS editor which is able to import MathML/Latex and export to MathML/Latex
Have a look over here, where you can find a perl version.
You may want to have a look at LaTeXML. It converts LaTeX to various XML formats, including OpenMath and content MathML.
But be warned, like all other tools, the conversion from (presentation-oriented) LaTeX to content markup (as in OpenMath and MathML) is heuristic. In particular, in ambiguous situations (e.g. $f(a+b)$, which can mean $f$ applied to $(a+b)$ or $f$ times $(a+b)$) LaTeXML chooses one (usually times).
There are two ways out:
1) use content markup already in the LaTeX source (see http://trac.kwarc.info/sTeX)
2) use a better post-processor for LaTeXML is working on this

Why does Tex/Latex not speed up in subsequent runs?

I really wonder, why even recent systems of Tex/Latex do not use any caching to speed up later runs. Every time that I fix a single comma*, calling Latex costs me about the same amount of time, because it needs to load and convert every single picture file.
(* I know that even changing a tiny comma could affect the whole structure but of course, a well-written cache format could see the impact of that. Also, there might be situations where 100% correctness is not needed as long as it’s fast.)
Is there something in the language of Tex which makes this complicated or impossible to accomplish or is it just that in the original implementation of Tex, there was no need for this (because it would have been slow anyway on those large computers)?
But then on the other hand, why doesn’t this annoy other people so much that they’ve started a fork which has some sort of caching (or transparent conversion of Tex files to a format which is faster to parse)?
Is there anything I can do to speed up subsequent runs of Latex? Except from putting all the stuff into chapterXX.tex files and then commenting them out?
Let's try to understand how TeX works. What happens when you write the following?
tex.exe myfile.tex
TeX reads your file byte by byte. First of all, TeX converts each char to pair <category, ascii-code>. Each character has category code and ascii code. Category code means that the character is an opening brace ({) or entrance into the mathematical mode ($), symbol-macro (~, for example) or letter (A-Z,a-z).
If TeX gets chars with category code 11 (letters) or 12 (other symbols: digits, comma, period) TeX starts a paragraph. You want to cache all paragraphs.
Suppose you changed something in your document. How can TeX check that all paragraphs after your changes is the same? May be you changed the category of some char. Me be you changed the meaning of some macro. Or you have removed } somewhere and thus changed the current font.
To be sure that the paragraph is the same you must be sure that all characters in the paragraph is the same, that all character categories is the same, the current font is the same, all math fonts is the same, and the value of some internal variables is the same (for example, \hsize, \vsize, \pretolerance, \tolerance, \hypenpenalty, exhyphenpenalty, \widowpenalty, \spaceskip, ..., ........)
You can be sure only that all paragraphed before your changes is the same. But in this case you must keep all states after each paragraph.
Your system SuperCachedTeX is very complicated. Isn't it?
If you're using pdftex, then you can use --draftmode on the command line for the first runs. This instructs pdftex not to generate a PDF.
Of course lots of things could be cached (like graphics information, for instance), but the way TeX works makes it hard to do. There is a rather complex initialization of TeX when it starts up, and one TeX run always means exactly one PDF written out. In order to do caching, you need to keep the data in memory (to be efficient).
You could use IPC and talk to a daemon to get the cached information. But that would involve lots programming. TeX is for normal purposes so blazingly fast, that this does not really gain a lot. But on the other hand, this is a good question, as I have seen LaTeX runs (on currend hardware) that run > 10 hours that would have benefited from caching.
Yet another answer, not strictly related:
You can use the LaTeX macro \include{...} and with \includeonly{} you can rerun your document for a subset only. But this is not caching, nor does it give you the complete document.
There are solutions such as preview-latex, which pre-compile stuff into a dedicated format file for speed purposes. You need to remember that TeX optimises pages on a local basis. There is no concpet at the engine level of material being fixed on a particular page, so you can't just "re-TeX one page".
Actually, the correct answer is (IMO): LaTeX already caches information in its output file (.aux, additional files for other packages). So if you add a comma, this information is reused and thus the typeset run is much faster then without this .aux file.
Tex does have a caching facility, named format files, and I think, pace Alexey's valuable summary of the problems representing Tex's state, it should be possible to use them to allow resumption of editing after any page eject.
The major issue is that pagebreaks will affect paragraphs or floats, and these may not occur at a particular point in the text, but may be occur in the execution of macros that were invoked dependent on the transient state passed to them when they were invoked.
So to make the idea of creating "breakpoints" work, one would need to hack Tex internals to dump additional information, beyond that normaally dumped in format files, and package them up with the state of the auxiliary files. Given what Joseph says about Tex fragment previewers, why would anyone bother hacking Tex to do this?

How to manually equalize columns in an IEEE paper if using BibTex?

IEEE conference publications in two-column format require authors to manually equalize the lengths of the columns on the last page of the final submission. I have typically done this by inserting a \newpage where necessary -- which usually ends up being somewhere amidst my (manually entered) references.
However, I have recently begun using BibTeX to manage references, and have now run into a problem: my last page contains only a few (generated) references, and I can't figure out how to manually equalize the columns.
The last page is the tail end of what is generated by:
\bibliographystyle{IEEEtran}
\bibliography{IEEEabrv,library}
Any ideas on how I can equalize the columns while continuing to use BibTeX?
I have submitted to both ACM and IEEE conferences and the easiest thing for me has been using:
\usepackage{flushend}
I've heard it doesn't always work well, but it's been great for me
http://www.ctan.org/pkg/flushend
I went back to RTFM again, and it turns out this is addressed right in "How to Use the IEEEtran LaTeX Class" by Michael Shell (maintainer). Section XIV notes that IEEEtran helpfully provides the \IEEEtriggeratref{} command for just this purpose. By default, it fires a \newline at the given BibTeX reference number. You can even change the command to fire with \IEEEtriggercmd{}.
It can also be done by using the balance package. You simply include the balance package in the preamble (\usepackage{balance}) and insert \balance some place on the last page of your document (for instance right in front of the references). However, I'm not sure if it's working if the last page (both columns) is completely full of references...
IEEE requires authors to equalize the lengths of the columns on the last page.
ACM makes us do this too. I just wind up inserting \vfill\break by hand either in the main text or somewhere in the .bbl file, wherever it makes the columns balance. By the time camera-ready copy goes to ACM, they want the .bbl file inlined by hand anyway, so tinkering by hand does not present an additional hardship.
The reference-number trick might be nice except I never use numbered references :-)
The multicols environment works only if you're luck and your last page comes out exactly as bibliography.
It would be extremely good (and not so difficult) if some enterprising hacker would build the "balance the two columns in the last page" functionality straight into LateX's \output routine. The flexibility is there in the underlying engine, and it would make a lot of people happy.
Not sure if multicol conflicts with bibtex at all, and I don't have time to check, sorry. But try this:
use the multicol package:
\usepackage{multicol} in your preamble, then:
\begin{multicols}{2}
\bibliographystyle{IEEEtran}
\bibliography{IEEEabrv,library}
\end{multicols}
Multicol automatically balances columns. I would recomend using it through out your document, instead of using the .cls or .sty's twocolumn option.

Is there a calculator with LaTeX-syntax?

When I write math in LaTeX I often need to perform simple arithmetic on numbers in my LaTeX source, like 515.1544 + 454 = ???.
I usually copy-paste the LaTeX code into Google to get the result, but I still have to manually change the syntax, e.g.
\frac{154,7}{25} - (289 - \frac{1337}{42})
must be changed to
154,7/25 - (289 - 1337/42)
It seems trivial to write a program to do this for the most commonly used operations.
Is there a calculator which understand this syntax?
EDIT:
I know that doing this perfectly is impossible (because of the halting problem). Doing it for the simple cases I need is trivial. \frac, \cdot, \sqrt and a few other tags would do the trick. The program could just return an error for cases it does not understand.
WolframAlpha can take input in TeX form.
http://blog.wolframalpha.com/2010/09/30/talk-to-wolframalpha-in-tex/
The LaTeXCalc project is designed to do just that. It will read a TeX file and do the computations. For more information check out the home page at http://latexcalc.sourceforge.net/
The calc package allows you to do some calculations in source, but only within commands like \setcounter and \addtolength. As far as I can tell, this is not what you want.
If you already use sage, then the sagetex package is pretty awesome (if not, it's overkill). It allows you get nicely formatted output from input like this:
The square of
$\begin{pmatrix}
1 & 2 \\
3 & 4
\end{pmatrix}$
is \sage{matrix([[1, 2], [3,4]])^2}.
The prime factorization of the current page number is \sage{factor(\thepage)}
As Andy says, the answer is yes there is a calculator that can understand most latex formulas: Emacs.
Try the following steps (assuming vanilla emacs):
Open emacs
Open your .tex file (or activate latex-mode)
position the point somewhere between the two $$ or e.g. inside the begin/end environment of the formula (or even matrix).
use calc embedded mode for maximum awesomeness
So with point in the formula you gave above:
$\frac{154,7}{25} - (289 - \frac{1337}{42})$
press C-x * d to duplicate the formula in the line below and enter calc-embedded mode which should already have activated a latex variant of calc for you. Your buffer now looks like this:
$\frac{154,7}{25} - (289 - \frac{1337}{42})$
$\frac{-37651}{150}$`
Note that the fraction as already been transformed as far as possible. Doing the same again (C-x * d) and pressing c f to convert the fractional into a floating point number yields the following buffer:
$\frac{154,7}{25} - (289 - \frac{1337}{42})$
$\frac{-37651}{150}$
$-251.006666667$
I used C-x * d to duplicate the formula and then enter embedded mode in order to have the intermediate values, however there is also C-x * e which avoids the duplication and simply enters embedded mode for the current formula.
If you are interested you should really have a look at the info page for Emacs Calc - Embedded Mode. And in general the help for the Gnu Emaca Calculator together with the awesome interactive tutorial.
You can run an R function called Sweave on a (mostly TeX with some R) file that can replace R expressions with their results in Tex.
A tutorial can be found here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/6451985/Learning-to-Sweave-in-APA-Style
My calculator can do that. To get the formatted output, double-click the result formula and press ctrl+c to copy it.
It can do fairly advanced stuff too (differentiation, easy integrals (and not that easy ones)...).
https://calculator-algebra.org/
A sample computation:
https://calculator-algebra.org:8166/#%7B%22currentPage%22%3A%22calculator%22%2C%22calculatorInput%22%3A%22%5C%5Cfrac%7B1%2B2%7D%7B3%7D%3B%20d%2Fdx(arctan%20(2x%2B3))%22%2C%22monitoring%22%3A%22true%22%7D
There is a way to do what you want just not quite how you describe.
You can use the fp package (\usepackage[options]{fp}) the floating point package will do anything you want; solving equations, adding dividing and many more. Unfortunately it will not read the LaTeX math you instead have to do something a little different, the documentation is very poor so I'll give an example here.
for instance if you want to do (2x3)/5 you would type:
\FPmul\p{2}{3} % \p is the assignment of the operation 2x3
\FPupn\p{\p{} 7 round} % upn evaluates the assignment \p and rounds to 7dp
\FPdiv\q{\p}{5} % divides the assigned value p by 5 names result q
\FPupn\q{\q{} 4 round} % rounds the result to 4 decimal places and evaluates
$\frac{2\times3}{5}=\FPprint\q$ % This will print the result of the calculations in the math.
the FP commands are always ibvisible, only FPprint prints the result associated with it so your documents will not be messy, FP commands can be placed wherever you wish (not verb) as long as they are before the associated FPprint.
You could just paste it into symbolab which as a bonus has free step by step solutions. Also since symbolab uses mathquill it instantly formats your latex.
Considering that LaTeX itself is a Turing-complete markup language I strongly doubt you can build something like this that isn't built directly into LaTeX. Furthermore, LaTeX math matkup itself has next to no semantic meaning, it merely describes the visual appearance.
That being said, you can probably hack together something which recognizes a non-programmable subset of LaTeX math markup and spits out the result in the same way. If all you're interested in is simple arithmetics with fractions and integers (careful with decimal fractions, though, as they may appear as 3{,}141... in German texts :)) this shouldn't be too hard. But once you start with integrals, matrices, etc. I fear that LaTeX lacks expressiveness to accurately describe your intentions. It is a document preparation system, after all and thus not very suitable as input for computer algebra systems.
Side note: You can switch to Word which has—in its current version—a math markup language which is sufficiently LaTeX-like (by now it even supports LaTeX markup) and yet still Google-friendly for simpler terms:
With the free Microsoft Math add-in you can even let Word calculate expressions in-place:
There is none, because it is generally not possible.
LaTeX math mode markup is presentational markup and there are cases in which it does not provide enough information to calculate the expression.
That was one of the reasons MathML content markup was created and also why MathML is used in Mathematica. MathML actually is sort of two languages in one:
presentation markup
content markup
To accomplish what you are after you'll have to have MathML with comibned presentation and content markup (see MathML spec).
In my opinion your best bet is to use MathML (even if it is verbose) and convert to LaTeX when necessary. That said, I also like LaTeX syntax best and maybe what we need is a compact syntax for MathML (something similar in spirit to RelaxNG compact syntax).
For calculations with LaTeX you can use a CalcTeX package.
This package understand elements of LaTeX language and makes an calculations, for example your problem is avialble on
http://sg.bzip.pl/CalcTeX/examples/frac.tgz
or just please write
\noindent
For calculation please use following enviromentals
$515.1544 + 454$
or
\[ \frac{154.7}{25}-(289-\frac{1337}{42.})
\]
or
\begin{equation}
154.7/25-(289-1337/42.)
\end{equation}
For more info please visite project web site or contact author of this project.
For performing the math within your LaTeX itself, you might also look into the pgfmath package, which is more powerful and convenient than the calc package. You can find out how to use it from Part VI of The TikZ and PGF Packages Manual, which you can find here (version 2.10 currently): http://mirror.unl.edu/ctan/graphics/pgf/base/doc/generic/pgf/pgfmanual.pdf
Emacs calc-mode accepts latex-input. I use it daily. Press "d", followed by "L" to enter latex input mode. Press "'" to open a prompt where you can paste your tex.
Anyone saing it is not possible is wrong.
IIRC Mathematica can do it.
There is none, because it is generally not possible. LaTeX math mode
markup is presentational markup and there are cases in which it does
not provide enough information to calculate the expression.
You are right. LaTeX as it is does not provide enough info to make any calculations.Moreover, it does not represent any information to do it. But nobody prevents to wright in LaTeX format a text that contains such an information.
It is a difficult path, because you need to build a system of rules superimposed on what content ofthe text in Latex format needs to contain that it would be recognizable by your interpreter. And then convince the user that it is necessary to learn, etc. etc...
The easiest way to create a logical and intuitive calculator of mathematical expressions. And the expression is already possible to convert latex. It's almost like what you said. This is implemented in the program which I have pointed to. AnEasyCalc allows to type an expression as you type the plane text in any text editor. It checks, calculates and generate LateX string by its own then. Its very easy and rapid work. Just try and you will see that.
This is not exactly what you are asking for but it is a nice package
that you can include in a LaTeX document to do all kind of operations including arithmetic, calculus and even vectors and matrices:
The package name is "calculator"
http://mirror.unl.edu/ctan/macros/latex/contrib/calculator/calculator.pdf
The latex2sympy2 Python library can parse LaTeX math expressions.
from latex2sympy2 import latex2sympy
tex_str = r"""YOUR TEX MATH HERE"""
tex_str = r"\frac{9\pi}{\ln(12)}+22" # example TeX math
sympy_object = latex2sympy(tex_str)
evaluated_tex = float(sympy_object.evalf())
print(evaluated_tex)
This Python 3 code evaluates 9𝜋/ln(12)+22 (in its LaTeX from above) to 33.37842899841745.
The snippet above only handles basic algebraic simplification (math expressions without variables). Since the library converts LaTeX math to SymPy objects, the above code can easily be tweaked and extended to handle much more complicated LaTeX math (including solving derivatives, integrals, etc...).
The latex2sympy2 library can be installed via the pip command: pip install --user latex2sympy2
<>
try the AnEasyCalc program. It allows to get the latex formula very easy:
http://steamandwater.od.ua/AnEasyCalc/
:)

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