readme2tex 0.0.1b2
Render LaTeX within your Github Readmes
License: MIT
Keywords: github readme markdown latex tex equations math svg markup

readme2tex
==========

Renders LaTeX for Github Readmes

.. math::


   \huge\text{Hello \LaTeX}

\ *Make sure that pdflatex is installed.*\ 

--------------

``readme2tex`` is a Python script that "texifies" your readme. It takes
in Github Markdown and replaces anything enclosed between dollar signs
with rendered :math:`\text{\LaTeX}`.

In addition, unlike the other Github TeX renderers, ``readme2tex``
ensures that inline mathematical expressions are properly aligned with
the rest of the text to avoid giving a "jumpy" look to the document.

Examples:
~~~~~~~~~

Here's a display level equation

.. math::


   \frac{n!}{k!(n-k)!} = {n \choose k}

The code that was used to render this equation is just

::

    $$
    \frac{n!}{k!(n-k)!} = {n \choose k}
    $$

\ *Note: you can escape \$ so that they don't render.*\

Here's an inline equation.

    It is well known that if :math:`ax^2 + bx + c =0`, then
    :math:`x = \frac{-b \pm \sqrt{b^2- 4ac}}{2a}`.

The code that was used to render this is:

::

    It is well know that if $ax^2 + bx + c = 0$, then $x = \frac{-b \pm \sqrt{b^2 - 4ac}}{2a}$.

Notice that the equations line up with the baseline of the text, even
when the height of these two images are different.

Sometimes, you might run into equations that are bottom-heavy, like
:math:`x^2\sum\limits_{3^{n^{n^{n}}}}`. Here, ``readme2tex`` can compute
the correct offset to align this equation to the baseline of your
paragraph of text as well.

Installation
~~~~~~~~~~~~

Currently, you just need to have ``readme2tex`` on your python-path, and
you can call

Usage
~~~~~

::

    python -m readme2tex --output README.md

It will then look for a file called ``readother.md`` and compile it down
to a readable Github-ready document.

In addition, you can specify other arguments to ``render.py``, such as:

-  ``--readme READOTHER.md`` The raw readme to process. Defaults to
   ``READOTHER.md``.
-  ``--output README.md`` The processed readme.md file. Defaults to
   ``README_GH.md``.
-  ``--packages ...`` A list of addition packages to use during
   :math:`\text{\LaTeX}` compilation. This is optional.
-  ``--svgdir svgs/`` The directory to store the output svgs. The
   default is ``svgs/``
-  ``--branch master`` *Experimental* Which branch to store the svgs
   into, the default is just master.
-  ``--username username`` Your github username. This is optional, and
   ``render.py`` will try to infer this for you.
-  ``--project project`` The current github project. This is also
   optional.
-  ``--nocdn True`` Ticking this will use relative paths for the output
   images. Defaults to False.
-  ``--htmlize False`` Ticking this will output a ``X.md.html`` file so
   you can preview what the output looks like. Defaults to False.
-  ``--valign False`` Ticking this will use the ``valign`` trick
   (detailed below) instead. See the caveats section for tradeoffs.

Technical Tricks
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

How can you tell where the baseline of an image is?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

By prepending every inline equation with an anchor. During
post-processing, we can isolate the anchor, which is fixed at the
baseline, and crop it out. It's super clowny, but it does the job.

Caveats
^^^^^^^

Github does not allow you to pass in custom style attributes to your
images. While this is useful for security purposes, it makes it
incredibly difficult to ensure that images will align correctly to the
text. ``readme2tex`` circumvents this using one of two tricks:

1. In Chrome, the attribute ``valign=offset`` works for ``img`` tags as
   well. This allows us to shift the image directly. Unfortunately, this
   is not supported within any of the other major browsers, therefore
   this mode is not enabled by default.
2. In every (reasonably modern) browser, the ``align=middle`` attribute
   will vertically center an image. However, the definition of the
   vertical "center" is different. In particular, for Chrome, Firefox,
   (and probably Safari), that center is the exact middle of the image.
   For IE and Edge however, the center is about 5 pixels (the height of
   a lower-case character) above the exact center. Since this looks
   great for non-IE browsers, and reasonably good on Edge, this is the
   default rendering method. The trick here is to pad either the top or
   the bottom of the image with extra spaces until the baseline of the
   equation is at the center. For most equations, this works great.
   However, if you have a tall equation, like
   :math:`\frac{~}{\sum\limits_{x^{x^{x^{x}}}}^{x^{x^{x^{x}}}} f(x)}`,
   you'll notice that there might be a lot of slack vertical spacing
   between these lines. If this is a deal-breaker for you, you can
   always try the ``--valign True`` mode. For most inline equations,
   this is usually a non-issue.