tex2gif: a latex to gif translator

Need an equation for that web page you're putting up? Have something too complex for Microsoft's equation editor? Long for the beauty of LaTeX equations in your PowerPoint presentation? Want to paste a copy of the Schrodinger equation to that letter home to Mom?

Then tex2gif.py is for you!

Examples

The kinetic energy operating on a wave function
The molecular Hamiltonian

Screen shots

Parameters

The LaTeX2GIF line contains the LaTeX string you want translated.
The size line contains the size. 72 is normal text size, 150 is a good choice for web page graphics.
Size 72: ; Size 150: ; Size 300: .
The scaling is a number between 1 and 2. Larger numbers generate larger files, but also have smoother graphics.
Scaling of 1: (256 bytes); Scaling of 1.5: (1092 bytes); Scaling of 2: (398 bytes).
For reasons I don't understand, a scaling of 2 produces smaller files than a scaling of 1.5.

Can I afford the big bucks for a high-quality program like that?

Yes you can, because today and every day, tex2gif.py is free, free, free! Released under the Gnu GPL. Pick up one for the kids! Bring home another for the wife or husband. Your friends will love it!

Requirements

Python/Tkinter
LaTeX 2e
ghostscript
pnmcrop, pnmscale, and ppmtogif: these are part of the netpbm package and can be downloaded from http://netpbm.sf.net.
ee, xv, ImageMagick's display, or some other way of displaying the resulting image (ee is wired into the code; if you use something else you'll have to modify the VIEWER variable appropriately).

It has not escaped the author's notice that many of these functions could be subsumed by the Python Imaging Library. If something like this is important to you, send the author a quick email to let him know.

Acknowledgements

This program couldn't have been written without Nikos Drakos' pstogif.pl program, part of the LaTeX2HTML package, and John Walker's textogif program.

Richard P. Muller <rpm@wag.caltech.edu>

Last modified: Thu Mar 17 08:08:19 2005