How can I mix LaTeX in with Markdown? [closed]

Question

I've been using Markdown for class notes, and it's great. I even do some preprocessing on the Markdown so I can do things like tables. But this term I'm teaching a class with a lot of math, and I'd love to be able to put LaTeX formulas with Markdown, something like this:

The refinement relation is written $a \sqsubseteq b$, which can be 
pronounced "$a$ approximates $b$" or "$b$ is at least as defined as $a$".

I'd like to be able to take each fragment of LaTeX and preprocess it into a nice antialiased PNG file which I could then include in my Markdown via the HTML <img> tag. But I have absolutely no idea how to take a fragment of LaTeX and get a nice image that

• Has the right bounding box
• Is antialiased

All I know how to do is get full pages in DVI, PostScript, or PDF formats.

I'm sure this problem has been addressed, but I haven't been able to guess the right search terms. Any suggestions how to solve it or where to look for an existing solution?

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EDIT: Having installed mathTeX, I can say that the code is inflexible, that it violates the Linux Filesystem Hierarchy standard, and that it is amateur work—in both the good and bad senses of that word. The code is so complex that there are no obvious faults. I will be looking for alternatives.

Also, it's clear that at bottom, solutions are based on dvipng.

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ONE YEAR LATER: I never did get the seamless integration I had been hoping for, but I am limping along on a script of my own devising. It turns out that instead of dvipng it is a little easier to use dvips -E and the convert program of ImageMagick. The benefits are slightly more control of things like scaling, and ease of making a transparent background. The curious can inspect this example.

I can't recommend this solution to anyone. But I can't recommend MathTeX either.

Answer 1

I'll answer your question with a counter-question...

What do you think of Org-mode? It's not as pure as Markdown, but it is Markdown-like, and I find it as easy to work with, and it allows embedding of Latex. Cf. http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/org/Embedded-LaTeX.html

Postscript

In case you haven't looked at org-mode, it has one great strength as a general purpose "natural markup language" over Markdown, namely its treatment of tables. The source:

| 1 | 0 | 0 |
| -1 | 1 | 0 |
| -1 | -1 | 1 |

represents just what you think it will...

And the Latex is rendered in pieces using tex-mode's preview-latex.

Answer 2

yes, but you'll have to hack it a little yourself. I've written a filter that replaces latex tags $\some\inline\latex$ or $$\some\equation$$ with appropriate image tags to a mimetex.cgi script. It took all of 5 minutes.

Warning: spectacularly ugly...

#!/usr/bin/env python
import sys, markdown,re

MIMETEX_LOC="http://some.server.com/cgi-bin/mimetex.cgi"

def sanitizeLatex(text):
    return re.sub(r"\\",r"%5C", text)

def wrapLatexBlock(text):
    return '<img alt="equation" class="block" src="%s?%s"></img>'%(MIMETEX_LOC,text)

def wrapLatexInline(text):
    return '<img alt="equation" class="inline" src="%s?%s"></img>'%(MIMETEX_LOC,text)

def prepLatexBlock(matchobj):
    return wrapLatexBlock(sanitizeLatex(matchobj.group()[2:-2]))

def prepLatexInline(matchobj):
    return wrapLatexInline(sanitizeLatex(matchobj.group()[1:-1]))


if __name__ == "__main__":
    # initialise markdown
    md=markdown.Markdown()
    raw_md=open(sys.argv[1],"r").read()

    ##
    # deal with embedded latex
    ##
    raw_md=re.sub(r'\$\$(.*?)\$\$',prepLatexBlock, raw_md)
    raw_md=re.sub(r'\$(.*?)\$',prepLatexInline, raw_md)

    ##
    # once latex is parsed, convert md to html
    ##
    main_html=md.convert(raw_md)

    # hey presto!
    print(main_html)

Of course, you have to define the appropriate css yourself for .block and .inline images...

Answer 3

kramdown does exactly what you describe:

https://kramdown.gettalong.org/syntax.html#math-blocks

And it's way more reliable and well-defined than Markdown.

Answer 4

I was looking for exactly the same thing when I found teqhtml. It does the conversion of $ and $$ equations to images with the nice bonus of aligning the resulting image vertically with the surrounding text. Not a lot of doc but it's quite straightforward.

Hope it helps some future readers.

Answer 5

Sorry to rouse a really old thread, but I've been using jemdoc for a couple of years and it is really excellent.

Answer 6

Perhaps mathJAX is the ticket. It's built on jsMath, a 2004 vintage JavaScript library.

As of 5-Feb-2015 I'd switch to recommend KaTeX - most performant Javascript LaTeX library from Khan Academy.