C# tool to render latex in Winforms or PNG/BMP/etc?

Question

I'm searching in vain to find a control or DLL which allows me to render Latex code within a C# winforms project.

(Most search terms seem to assume I'm trying to render C# code within Latex...)

I plan to build Expressions & convert to Latex code then render on screen on the fly.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

The following might help you. Feel free to edit my code to accommodate all known best practices.

Step 0

Make sure you have installed LaTeX distro (either TeX Live or MikTeX) and ImageMagick. Register the ImageMagick's path to the System Path such that convert command is available everywhere.

Step 1

Create a new WinForm project in C# (or VB). Drag one RichTextBox, one Button and one PictureBox onto the Form. Write the code behind as follows.

using System;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.IO;
using System.Windows.Forms;
namespace LaTeXEditor
{
    public partial class Form1 : Form
    {
        public Form1()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
        }

        private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            File.WriteAllText("input.tex", richTextBox1.Text);

            Process p1 = new Process();
            p1.StartInfo.FileName = "batch.bat";
            p1.StartInfo.Arguments = "input";
            p1.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = false;

            p1.Start();
            p1.WaitForExit();

            pictureBox1.ImageLocation = "output.png";    
        }

        private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            richTextBox1.Text = 
@"\documentclass[preview,border=12pt]{standalone}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{tikz}

\begin{document}
PSTricks is more powerful than this one\\ \tikz\draw[red] (0,0) circle (1);
\end{document}
";
        }
    }
}

Step 2

Add a new file named batch.bat to the project. The hard-coded literals should be avoided if necessary by defining additional parameters to the batch file.

rem batch.bat
rem %1 represents the file name with no extension.
pdflatex -jobname=output %1
convert -density 200 -alpha on output.pdf output.png

Modify the post build event as follows to copy the batch.bat to the project output directory.

Step 3

Compile and make a try as follows.

Answer 2

Step 1 create a new Wpf-app, link Wpf-math, use Nuget Browser

Step 2. ... and modify the MainWindow() as follows

using WpfMath.Converters;
namespace WpfMathExample
{
    public partial class MainWindow : Window
    {
     const string latex = @"\frac{2+2}{2}";
     const string fileName = @"formula.png";
 public MainWindow()
 {
    InitializeComponent();

    // modification starts here..

    File.Open(fileName, FileMode.OpenOrCreate).Close();

    var parser = new WpfMath.TexFormulaParser();
    var formula = parser.Parse(latex);
    var renderer = formula.GetRenderer(WpfMath.TexStyle.Display, 20.0,   "Arial");
    var bitmapSource = renderer.RenderToBitmap(0, 0);

    var encoder = new System.Windows.Media.Imaging.PngBitmapEncoder();
encoder.Frames.Add(System.Windows.Media.Imaging.BitmapFrame.Create(bitmapSource));
    using (var target = new FileStream(fileName, FileMode.Create))
    {
      encoder.Save(target);
    }
}

}
}

After the run, you will have a .png file next to your .exe in your debug directory, which looks as follows:

(tested 05-feb-2022 VS2019, WPF .Net5)