What is the best way to insert a diagram generated by TeX e.g. via TikZ or similar, in a Google Colab notebook? Tried inserting code for TikZ but that was not recognised. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.
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Had the same question, figured out the rest. Colab supports apt in addition to pip installs, so it was a matter of figuring out which additional packages were needed to work with the ipython-tikzmagic package Torbjorn recommended.
I found also that I have to specify a "-f svg" option in order for it to detect the image generated by tikz. I suspect that a small code change to ipython-tikzmagic would fix this, or I chose a latex install that behaves slightly differently than the one ipython-tikzmagic assumes.
Here's an example colab notebook.
[Edit: Adding notebook commands here per commenter's request. Cell contents separated by whitespace. This worked as of 12/1/2020, but likely will at some point break in the future due to packages evolving.]
!apt update
!apt install imagemagick
!apt install pdf2svg
!apt install texlive texlive-latex-extra
!pip install git+git://github.com/mkrphys/ipython-tikzmagic.git
%load_ext tikzmagic
%%tikz -S test_output.tikz -f svg
\draw (0,0) rectangle (1,1);
\filldraw (0.5,0.5) circle (.1);
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1GNczHdylcfYDFC1HpcloDRJxnmKpCuDO?usp=sharing
Would love to see ipython-tikzmagic to work within markdown.
jrjbertram
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Nice! The answer would be even better if you were to say in the text exactly what you needed to install and how, and where to specify
-f svg(in case you delete that example notebook, or the link dies). – Torbjørn T. Oct 09 '20 at 14:31 -
!apt install imagemagick !apt install pdf2svg !apt install texlive texlive-latex-extra !pip install git+git://github.com/mkrphys/ipython-tikzmagic.git %load_ext tikzmagic %%tikz -S test_output.tikz -f svg \draw (0,0) rectangle (1,1); \filldraw (0.5,0.5) circle (.1); – msm1089 Nov 01 '20 at 19:48
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This doesn't work for me, when I click on "run all" I get something like
– Rainb Nov 30 '20 at 11:34No image generated. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- FileNotFoundError Traceback (most recent call last) <ipython-input-22-14695ad3262e> in <module>() ----> 1 get_ipython().run_cell_magic('tikz', '-S test_output.tikz -f svg', '\\draw (0,0) rectangle (1,1);\n\\filldraw (0.5,0.5) circle (.1);') ] FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/tmp/tmpxxov9ug9/tikz.svg'``` -
@rainb, I reran it and found the same. Earlier in the notebook, pdf2svg wasn't being installed. I added an !apt update at the beginning and this resolved the pdf2svg install. Notebook is updated. – jrjbertram Dec 01 '20 at 12:57
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Thanks for all the answers. For future reference I ran into the issue that the PIP installation of tikzmagic on google colab failed (@time 2023-04-2). Found a fix on the git repo . To install with PIP 'recommend:
!pip install git+https://github.com/mkrphys/ipython-tikzmagic.git
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1This would be more helpful as an edit to the other answer, you can click "improve this answer" under the existing answer to suggest an edit yourself. – Dai Bowen Apr 02 '23 at 17:28
pip(https://colab.research.google.com/notebooks/snippets/importing_libraries.ipynb), and there is an option for using TikZ directly in a Notebook (https://github.com/mkrphys/ipython-tikzmagic), but it didn't work for me, could be that a complete tex installation is not available in Colab. Perhaps https://stackoverflow.com/a/30334730 for SVG, or use the button in the interface to add a PNG. – Torbjørn T. Aug 19 '20 at 14:11