Compile TeX (directly) into SVG using the command line

Question

Is there a way to directly compile TeX code into the SVG image format (rather than going the detour over TeX => PDF => SVG)?

I found this question: Convert LaTeX to SVG online

But I don't want to do it online - it should be a command-line call.

Perhaps http://download.cnet.com/Free-PDF-to-SVG-Converter/3000-18497_4-76168803.html . Google may find other downloadable tools. — Ethan Bolker, Jul 15 '15 at 13:41
inkscape --without-gui --file=input.pdf --export-plain-svg=output.svg (http://stackoverflow.com/a/10290006/2442087) — giordano, Jul 15 '15 at 13:43
Yeah, I know these solutions. I'm currently using pdf2svg-0.2.2. But I was hoping for a direct tex-to-svg solution... — lukas.coenig, Jul 15 '15 at 14:33
What is the problem with going via PDF? You can still write a Makefile or define an alias, which includes the final conversion to SVG. — Jost, Jul 15 '15 at 15:44
ok, i'll elaborate a little: i compile the latex code from inside a servlet. the output is sent to the user as a svg figure in a web page. using tex=>pdf=>svg works in principle, but is more costly in terms of server resources than i assume a single step would be. also, sometimes pdflatex doesn't terminate. i'm looking into the reason for this, but was hoping to avoid the debugging by simply avoiding pdf. — lukas.coenig, Jul 15 '15 at 16:31
Does batchmode help to avoid the termination problem? See this question — Jost, Jul 15 '15 at 17:05
pdflatex --interaction=batchmode --halt-on-error should resolve the not terminating. — MaxNoe, Mar 02 '17 at 18:50
Related conversion - How can I use TikZ to make standalone (SVG) graphics? - TeX - LaTeX Stack Exchange — user202729, Feb 03 '24 at 12:05

Serge Stroobandt · Answer 1 · 2020-10-16T09:14:45.797

12

`tex2svg`

The command tex2svg becomes available once mathjax-node-cli in combination with node.js is installed.

With (X)Ubuntu LTS, this requires only two installation steps:

$ sudo apt install nodejs npm
$ sudo npm install --global mathjax-node-cli

The command:

$ /usr/local/lib/node_modules/mathjax-node-cli/bin/tex2svg '\sin^2{\theta} + \cos^2{\theta} = 1' > test.svg

will yield:

Note 1: If node is used with NVM, the path may be different. The path can be found with:

$ type node
/usr/bin/node

Note 2: The generated SVG file renders properly inside a browser but cannot be displayed using standard image tools.

Note 3: Generating SVG from a TeX file can be done as follows:

$ cat YOURSOURCEFILE.tex | xargs -0 -t -I % /usr/local/lib/node_modules/mathjax-node-cli/bin/tex2svg '%' > YOURENDFILE.svg

edited Oct 16 '20 at 09:14

answered Dec 14 '16 at 00:06

Serge Stroobandt

4,252

2

You may need to use sudo npm install --global mathjax-node-cli and /usr/local/lib/node_modules/mathjax-node-cli/bin/tex2svg '\sin^2{\theta} + \cos^2{\theta} = 1' > test.svg now – omnomnom Feb 14 '18 at 14:40
this did not work for me: npm WARN EBADENGINE Unsupported engine { – con Feb 09 '24 at 16:44

Sir Cornflakes · Answer 2 · 2015-07-15T16:19:02.777

9

You can use classical LaTeX (with dvi output) and dvisvgm ( http://www.ctan.org/pkg/dvisvgm ) to convert the dvi file to SVG.

EDIT: I am not aware of a *svgtex implementation that does the conversion in one step.

edited Jul 15 '15 at 16:19

answered Jul 15 '15 at 16:12

Sir Cornflakes

3,582

3

Could you explain, why going via DVI is an improvement over going via PDF? – Jost Jul 15 '15 at 16:16
2

@Jost Frankly, no, but the OP asked for a pdf-free way to achieve his goal. – Sir Cornflakes Jul 15 '15 at 16:17
Not me but the OP asked the question. I'm just curious. – Jost Jul 15 '15 at 16:29
i (the "OP", i assume - what does it mean anyway?) elaborated above why i looked for a pdf-free method. i'll certainly try your suggestion using dvi - thanks for that! However, i'm starting to feel that pdflatex is not the real problem, and i'll run into the same trouble with dvi... – lukas.coenig Jul 15 '15 at 16:34
2

@lukas.coenig OP is our slang for "original poster" – Sir Cornflakes Jul 15 '15 at 16:36
1

Also possible: xelatex --no-pdf producing extended DVI (file ending xdv) and subsequent conversion to SVG with dvisvgm. – AlexG Nov 26 '18 at 10:09

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 06 '21 at 12:24

In my windows, this works,

Install:

Ghostscript (select 64 bit)
Inkscape (select 64 bit)

Then add the "bin" folder to path.

For example, I add "C:\Program Files\Inkscape\bin" and "C:\Program Files\gs\gs9.54.0\bin" to the user path.

If you have a "document.tex" file, then

pdflatex document.tex
gswin64 -dNoOutputFonts -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -o tmp.pdf document.pdf
inkscape -o document.svg tmp.pdf

Here gswin64 can convert the text to path, avoid the font error when inkscape convert to svg. Although the inkscape has "-T" option that convert text to path, however, this doesn't work sometimes expectially when you are use tikzpicture.

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 24 '22 at 12:59

Here's a command line tool to convert mathematical expressions in tex to svg (via pdflatex and pdf2svg): https://github.com/yannikschaelte/tex2svg

Example usage:

tex2svg '$\exp(i\cdot\pi) + 1 = 0$' out.svg

(Disclaimer: I'm the author, so likely biased.)

Compile TeX (directly) into SVG using the command line

4 Answers4

`tex2svg`

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