JupyterLab LaTeX

An extension for JupyterLab which allows for live-editing of LaTeX documents.

Usage

To use, right-click on an open .tex document within JupyterLab, and select Show LaTeX Preview: This will compile the .tex file and open the rendered PDF document. Subsequent saves of the file will automatically update the PDF. If the PDF fails to compile (possibly due to a syntax error), an error panel will open detailing the LaTeX error.

Requirements

• JupyterLab 0.31
• An application that can compile .tex files to PDF (e.g., pdflatex, xelatex; use pdflatex.exe on Windows with MiKTeX). This application must be available as a command in the same environment as the notebook server.
• An application that can process .bib files for producing bibliographies. As withe the LaTeX command, this must be available in the same environment as the notebook server.

Installation

This extension includes both a notebook server extension (which interfaces with the LaTeX compiler) and a lab extension (which provides the UI for the LaTeX preview). In order to use it, you must enable both of them.

To install the server extension, run the following in your terminal:

pip install jupyterlab_latex

If you are running Notebook 5.2 or earlier, enable the server extension by running

jupyter serverextension enable --sys-prefix jupyterlab_latex

To install the lab extension, run

jupyter labextension install @jupyterlab/latex

Installing from source

You can also install from source in order to develop the extension.

From the jupyterlab-latex directory, enter the following into your terminal:

pip install .

This installs the server extension.

If you are running Notebook 5.2 or earlier, enable the server extension by running

jupyter serverextension enable --sys-prefix jupyterlab_latex

Then, to install the lab extension, run

jlpm install
jlpm run build
jupyter labextension install .

Customization

The extension defaults to running xelatex on the server. This command may be customized (e.g., to use pdflatex instead) by customizing your jupyter_notebook_config.py file:

c.LatexConfig.latex_command = 'pdflatex'

The extension defaults to running bibtex for generating a bibliography if a .bib file is found. You can also configure the bibliography command by setting

c.LatexConfig.bibtex_command = '<custom_bib_command>'

LaTeX files have the ability to run arbitrary code by triggering external shell commands. This is a security risk, and so most LaTeX distributions restrict the commands that you can run in the shell.

You can customize the behavior by setting the LatexConfig.shell_escape value. It can take three values: "restricted" (default) to allow only commands considered safe to be executed, "allow" to allow all commands, and "disallow" to disallow all commands. For example, to force your LaTeX distribution to run any command, use:

c.LatexConfig.shell_escape = "allow"