TeX is much to complicated for me, especially when it comes to simple text – I prefer the simplicity of Textile. But when it comes to typesetting formulas, there’s no real alternative.
So I’m trying to combine them, with this little Ruby script which runs on Leopard and uses latex2png:
require 'redcloth' TEX_PATTERN = /\$(\$)?(\{[^\}]+\})?(\S[^\$]*)\$\$?/ QUALITY = 1 math_textile = ARGF.read IMAGE_PREFIX = 'temp' TEX_TEMPLATE = <<'TEX_DOCUMENT' \documentclass{scrartcl} \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} \usepackage{amsmath} % math... \usepackage{pxfonts} % \mathbb \begin{document} \pagestyle{empty} % no page number <TEX> \end{document} TEX_DOCUMENT def generate_image tex, image_file_name File.open image_file_name + '.tex', 'w' do |file| file.puts TEX_TEMPLATE.sub('<TEX>', tex) end `latex2png -s #{115 * QUALITY} #{image_file_name}.tex` `rm #{image_file_name}.tex` end textile = math_textile.gsub(TEX_PATTERN) do big, styles, tex = $1, $2 || '{}', $3 if big tex = "\\[#{tex}\\]" else tex = "$#{tex}$" end image_file_name = "temp-#{tex.hash.%(2**32).to_s(16)}" unless File.exist?(image_file_name + '.png') generate_image tex, image_file_name end width = `file #{image_file_name}.png`[/(\d+) x /, 1].to_i styles.sub!('{', "{vertical-align: middle; width: #{width / QUALITY}px; ") "!#{styles}#{"file://#{Dir.pwd}/" if ENV['TM_FILEPATH']}#{image_file_name}.png(#{tex.tr '()', '[]' })!" end puts RedCloth.new(textile).to_html
Here’s an example input and output, and a TextMate Command.
I call it “Fabrik” (German for factory), because it sounds like fabric, a synonym for textile.