Converting Latex Documents to Sage Worksheets

Introduction

Latex documents can be translated to jsMath, the tool used to render mathematics in the Sage notebook. This project is about automating the conversion process so that authors can easily use a single command to convert a book-length Latex document to a collection of Sage worksheets. These could have embedded Sage input cells, possibly containing interacts, and the cross-referencing features of Latex would be preserved in the collection of Sage worksheets.
Rob Beezer, [email protected], rbeezer on #sage-devel IRC

Links

• Trac Ticket 8105 Contains project snapshots, links to other tickets

• Mercurial Repository @BitBucket
  Clone using:

   hg clone https://[email protected]/rbeezer/tex2sws/

Examples

To view a worksheet, click on the "worksheet" link, then in the resulting page find the big blue download box and use your browser's function to copy the link there.
Then open your notebook, click the "Upload" link near the upper-left and then paste in the link into the URL field (the second one).

Note: To best view the two examples below from Beezer's linear algebra text, it is necessary to slightly tweak the jsMath configuration in Sage. It is a one-character edit. You can still view the sections, but "reasons" given in math displays (generally in proofs) won't render right and you will see lots of "@a()" stuff. This will be fixed once Trac 8202 is merged, which is slated for Sage 4.3.2. So check the ticket and check your version of Sage (sage --version) and maybe you don't need to do this.

The file to edit is

SAGE_ROOT/local/lib/python/site-packages/sagenb-0.6-py2.6.egg/sagenb/data/sage/js/jsMath.js

where you might have to adjust the numbering on the sagenb package. Then at line 97 (or thereabouts) make the following change

jsMath.safeHBoxes=1 --> jsMath.safeHBoxes=0

Also, these examples have a bit of a formatting problem for larger matrices (more than two rows) on my setup, but I'm uncertain if that is my problem or more general. A report, either way, would be appreciated if you look at these.

• A Whole-Book Experiment (2010/02/07)

  This is all of Beezer's First Course in Linear Algebra as a linked collection of Sage worksheets. It runs about 900 pages when printed, but as a tar archive is around 700K.

  • See note above about jsMath configuration and matrix formatting.
  • No Sage content yet - see other experiments for demonstrations.
  • Installation: To rig worksheet numbers, and thus have cross-worksheet linking work properly, it is necessary to create a pristine user and insert the worksheets properly into the notebook storage area. In the following, you must use the new user "linear", password and notebook location can be adjusted. But the notebook location needs to end with ".sagenb".

    $ sage
    sage: from sagenb.notebook.notebook import Notebook
    sage: nb=Notebook("/tmp/fcla.sagenb")
    sage: nb.add_user('linear', 'algebra', '', account_type='user', force=True)
    sage: exit
    $ cd /tmp/fcla.sagenb/home
    $ tar -xvf /path/to/fcla-worksheets.tar.bz2
    $ sage
    sage: notebook(directory="/tmp/fcla.sagenb")

  • You will possibly be asked to create an admin password, just do it.
  • Even if you see the right worksheets, sign-out right away.
  • Sign-in as the user "linear" with password "algebra".
  • Now you should be able to view the worksheets.

• tikz graphics migration (2010/02/03)
  

  • tikz graphics in latex source passing through to the worksheet
  • combinatorial graphs in Sage creating tikz source, also included
  • worksheet has graphics as SVG, live cells, graph editor
  • Not all browsers render SVG? Tested in Firefox

  • Latex source, some generated by Sage

  • PDF, a faithful rendition

  • Worksheet, note SVG graphics, run code, experiment with graph editor

  • This experiment prompted by a mailing list discussion

• Group Theory Primer (2010/01/28)
  Lots of simple Sage code, some simple mathematics, one interact (search for "@interact")
  Best working demo (though it lacks a title)
  Worksheet Source

• Textbook Section Experiment (2010/01/30, updated 2010/02/07)
  This is a straight conversion of a math-heavy section from Beezer's linear algebra text.

  • See note above about jsMath and matrix formatting.

  • The original tex4ht output is at FCLA Section FS in jsMath which seems to render just fine for me.

  • There is no embedded Sage code here yet, but that will be easy to add.
  • Links go nowhere unless they are internal to this section.

  • Worksheet

• Linked Worksheets (2010/01/30)
  A simple manufactured example of cross-worksheet linking.

  • Fire up Sage, then create a new, temporary notebook with the user "link"

    sage: from sagenb.notebook.notebook import Notebook
    sage: nb = Notebook('/tmp/test.sagenb')
    sage: nb.add_user('link', 'link', '', force=True)
    sage: nb.save()
    sage: exit

  • At system command-line extract archive (below) to create the worksheets with numbers 0 and 1 in link's space.

    $ cd /tmp/test.sagenb/home
    $ tar -xvf <path-to>/link-worksheets.tar.gz

  • Fire up Sage to start a notebook session in the temporary notebook:

    sage: notebook(directory="/tmp/test.sagenb")

  • You may need to create an admin password (do it).

    You may see the worksheets, but be logged in as admin.
    If needed, be certain to login as "link" with password "link."
    

  • Open worksheet 0, execute a cell or two, find link to worksheet 1.
  • Follow link to worksheet 1, execute some cells here too.

  • Archive (described above) Python generation script

tex4ht

This is a list of known configurations of tex4ht that seem to work:

• "tex4ht is part of the standard mactex distribution" (Dana Ernst, 2010/01/29)
• "TeXLive 2009 (separate from Ubuntu package manager) includes its own little package manager ('tlmgr') and I used that to install tex4ht" (Dan Drake, 2010/01/30)
• Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Debian: Untested, (K)Ubuntu Karmic 2009/05/21, Debian stable 2008/07/01, Debian testing 2009/06/11

Related Project

• sws2tex, Example
  Anybody want to try for the round-trip, Latex -> SWS -> Latex?

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