PyLaTeXc

A preprocessor/evaluator of pylatex source files (LaTeX with embedded python) into valid LaTeX.

Let me know if you think this would be more readily achieved with a compiler plugin, I opted for the script-fu solution.

What is it?

Allows you to use Python in your LaTeX document (whichever supported version you have installed) by means of an execution environment and an evaluation macro:

\begin{pyexec}
    import math  # you can define your calculations in the document!
    x = math.log(100)
\end{pyexec}

\begin{document}

The value of $x$ is \pyeval{x}!

And the value of $y$ is \pyeval{{1,2,3}&{2,1}}

\end{document}

It's all just textual substitution, where the pyexec environments disappear and the pyevals are replaced with their formatted equivalents.

Try something more advanced, like grabbing the collected works of Shakespeare from MIT's portal and generating a word frequency chart in your document with pgf plots.

Install

I haven't put it up on PyPI, I would want to set up some unit tests and tox testing (to test support for different versions of Python) before I put it up there.

You can still however install with pip's handy git targets.

pip install git+https://github.com/MichaelBelousov/PyTeXc.git

Usage

You can use the optional arguments or default to stdin/stdout, invoking from python using its module argument is ideal because that way you can control your python version by the interpreter you are invoking.

python -m pylatexc -i path/to/input.file -o path/to/output.file
python -m pylatexc < path/to/input.file > path/to/output.file
python3 -m pylatexc < path/to/input.file > path/to/output.file

Notes

Checkout cog, I prefer the syntax in pylatexc's method. It feels more homey.

I wrote an article about this on my blog: https://mikemikeb.com/#/blog

TODO: