Changing style of PDF-Latex output through IPython Notebook conversion

Question

Currently with the following command of my .ipynb file:

$ ipython nbconvert --to latex --post PDF Untitled1.ipynb --SphinxTransformer.author=\"John Doe\"
[NbConv         


        

Answer 1

Like the OP, I'm not very happy with IPython 2 output from nbconvert. Since the converter no longer uses the Sphinx documentclass or the Sphinx preprocessing system, you can't use the SphinxTransformer calls on the nbconverter line.

The Rude-and-Crude Way

Drop --post PDF so nbconvert creates just the .tex file. Then, edit the .tex file to make it prettier. Then, run pdflatex on it a few times.

To make yourself the author, add a line like the following right after the \title line in the he .tex file:

\author{Never Saint}

You can find nice templates to help you make output look like what you want at latextemplates.com.

The Root-User's Way

Another approach is to roll a new template, starting with the ones in .../IPython/nbconvert/templates/latex. As the root user, add an article1.tplx file next to article.tplx and report.tplx. The following version creates a different output style that I personally find useful. The "margins" block produces front matter for LaTex, and the "predoc" block produces commands and text that are inserted at the start of the document. I blank out the "maketitle" block so there's no title page. Delete my empty "maketitle" block if you want to have a title page with an author and a date.

Usage: nbconvert --to latex yourNotebook.ipynb --template article1 --to PDF

% Default to the notebook output style
((* if not cell_style is defined *))
    ((* set cell_style = 'style_ipython.tplx' *))
((* endif *))

% Inherit from the specified cell style.
((* extends cell_style *))


%===============================================================================
% Latex article1, based on Article 
%===============================================================================

((* block docclass *))
\documentclass{article}
((* endblock docclass *))
((* block margins *))
\usepackage{blindtext}
\usepackage{mathptmx}% Times Roman font
\usepackage[scaled=.90]{helvet}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{titlesec}
\titleformat{\title}[display]
  {\normalfont\sffamily\huge\bfseries\color{blue}}
  {\titlename}{20pt}{\Huge}
\titleformat{\section}
  {\normalfont\sffamily\Large\bfseries\color{darkgray}}
  {\subsection}{1em}{} 
\titleformat{\subsection}
  {\normalfont\sffamily\Large\bfseries\color{darkgray}}
  {\thesubsection}{1em}{} 
\parindent=0pt
\parskip=6pt
((* endblock margins *))

((* block predoc *))
\begin{document}

\pagestyle{plain}
\thispagestyle{plain}
\pagenumbering{arabic}
\setcounter{page}{5}
\lfoot{\copyright 2014}

This document is composed as an
\href{http://ipython.org/notebook.html}{IPython} notebook. The printed
version of this document was generated from the \texttt{IPython}
notebook, using the \texttt{ipython nbconvert} utility to generate a
\texttt{Latex} document. 
((* block maketitle *))((* endblock maketitle *))
((* block author *))\author{Put Your Name Here}((* endblock author *))
((* endblock predoc *))