Lax

Dev tools

latex generator

SHOW HN2017

74points
34comments
#601of 2,242 in 2017
Top 27%of 2017 by points

How HN took it

RoastedHalf or more of the comments are critical

0 positive, 1 neutral or asking, 1 mixed, 9 critical, out of 11 comments about the project. Thread score -0.55.

Idea: 0 for, 6 againstExecution: 0 for, 2 againstDocs: 0 for, 1 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Cool project, may use it in the future

    From 1 comment
    • The title suggests you can write Python and get LaTeX, but it's "converting ordinary expressions into mathTeX". I was expecting something like this: ``` def…
      lucb1e on HN

Objections

  • Title suggests writing Python to produce full documents, but it only converts expressions to math LaTeX

    From 2 comments
    • The title suggests you can write Python and get LaTeX, but it's "converting ordinary expressions into mathTeX". I was expecting something like this: ``` def…
      lucb1e on HN
    • Title should be more like "convert fractions to LaTeX using Python". Otherwise it's misleading/overadvertising.
      stared on HN
  • Output for powers is wrong: x ** 2 becomes a square root

    From 2 comments
    • Interesting. Quick question though: ``` tau@eletron:~$ lax -c '((x-1) ** ((x-1)/(x+2)))/(y-z+k-e+w)' \frac{\sqrt[\left(\frac{x-1}{x+2}\right)]{\left(x-1\right)}}{y-z+k-e+w} ```…
      adsche on HN
    • A simpler example: ``` $ lax -c 'x ** 2' \sqrt[2]{x} ``` While the output should be: ``` x^2. ``` If you wanted to use sqrt, it would have to be: ``` \sqrt[\frac{1}{2}]{x} ```
      S4M on HN
  • Unclear why the project exists

    From 1 comment

Requests

  • Support x^2 power notation

    From 1 comment
    • The output for x 2 was chosen to print out \sqrt because it is possible to have x ^2 in python whose output would be x ^ 2 as expected. The idea is using to print long sqrt so…
      iogf on HN
  • Integration with vy editor and emacs/vim support

    From 1 comment
    • My next plan is extending Lax with a basic set of latex structures and integrating with vy. (This was one of the goals behind Lax) https://github.com/iogf/vy I believe some other…
      iogf on HN

Questions

  • How does it handle variables only known at run time?

    From 1 comment
    • I wonder how it deals with code that depends on variables that are known only at run time.
      amelius on HN

Alternatives named

  • PyLaTeX

    From 2 comments
    • Related: https://github.com/JelteF/PyLaTeX, which is a "Python library for creating LaTeX files".
      edwinksl on HN
    • PyLaTeX does that: ``` with doc.create(Section('A section')): doc.append('Some regular text and some ') doc.append(italic('italic text. ')) ``` https://github.com/JelteF/PyLaTeX
      Rick_Sullivan on HN
  • SymPy latex printer

    From 1 comment
    • I think Sympy's latex solution is probably more complete, but of course it requires a bigger install (but Sympy is already in Anaconda). Their example: ``` >>>…
      jmmcd on HN
  • AsciiMath

    From 2 comments
    • This "pythonic" way looks for me like AsciiMath http://asciimath.org/ Shameless plug... if you want to convert from AsciiMath to LaTeX here is something I've written (it's not…
      therealmarv on HN
    • you should check out AsciiMath ... http://asciimath.org It's one of the easiest ways of writing math and already pretty complete.
      therealmarv on HN
  • Scribble (Racket)

    From 1 comment
    • I am really hopeful for Scribble from Racket as a Latex replacement. > Scribble is a collection of tools for creating prose documents—papers, books, library documentation,…
      baldfat on HN
  • SageTeX

    From 1 comment
    • If this interests you, there's also Sagetex [0]. Sagemath is a fully fledged computer algebra system based on Python; Sagetex is a Latex package that allows you to perform…
      n4r9 on HN

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

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