Looking for a self-contained equation rendering library [closed]

Question

Is there such a thing as a small, self-contained library that will render an equation written in a text-based format (e.g. LaTeX or MathML) to an image (either vector or raster)?

It would be preferable if it's in Python or Python-friendly.

(One possibility that I've found: Matplotlib has Python code to parse and display LaTeX equations, using gl2ps. If I don't find anything else it seems possible to extract all the relevant bits into a separate library.)

EDIT: by "self-contained" I mean they can't use TeX/LaTex itself since unfortunately I can't rely on it being installed

Answer 1

You can try to convert MathML to SVG.

Answer 2

There's mimetex a stand alone program for rendering latex math... it's not a library however

http://www.forkosh.com/mimetex.html