Converting latex code to Images (or other displayble format) with Python

Question

I have a function I am consuming that returns a string of latex code. I need to generate an image from this. Most of the methods I have seen for doing so suggest calling an external application via say the subprocess module which will generate the image for me.

However, management is not keen on this as it will require external users to install additional software in addition to our own which, with our user base, is not something we can assume to be a simple task.

So are there any python libraries that will accomplish the task of taking latex into a format (such as an image file) which is displayable in a GUI?

Answer 1

SymPy has a builtin preview function that does this.

expr = sin(sqrt(x**2 + 20)) + 1 preview(expr, viewer='file', filename='output.png') 

generates

There are lots of options to preview to change the format of the output (for instance, if you don't like the Euler font you can set euler=False).

preview also accepts a LaTeX string instead of a SymPy expression if you have that

preview(r'$$\int_0^1 e^x\,dx$$', viewer='file', filename='test.png', euler=False)