Is it possible for Python to display LaTex in real time in a text box?

Question

I plan on making a GUI where the user would input their mathematical expressions into a text box, such as Tkinter Entry Widget, and their expressions would be displayed in t

Answer 1

This is a working example (python2, raspbian), although it is not very elegant. This is one solution among a multitude, but it shows all the steps from the latex source file to the Tkinter program.

from subprocess import call
import Tkinter

TEX = (  # use raw strings for backslash
  r"\documentclass{article}",
  r"\begin{document}",
  r"$$a^2 + b^2 = c^2$$",
  r"$$x=\frac{-b \pm \sqrt{b^2 - 4ac}}{2a}$$",
  r"\end{document}",
)

with open('doc1.tex','w') as out_file:
  for t in TEX:
    out_file.write("%s\n" % t)

call(['latex','doc1.tex'])
call(['dvips','doc1.dvi','-o','doc1.ps'])
call(['gs','-sDEVICE=ppmraw','-dNOPAUSE','-dBATCH','-dSAFER','-sOutputFile=doc1.ppm','doc1.ps'])

root1 = Tkinter.Tk()
img1 = Tkinter.PhotoImage(file="doc1.ppm")
label1 = Tkinter.Label(root1, image=img1)
label1.pack()
root1.mainloop()

There are a lot of possible variations: compile latex to pdf instead of ps; use other image file formats; use library PIL to support other formats, etc.

This solution is also very inefficient (don't tell me, I know). For example, on my system, the ppm file is 1,5Mb. The equations also appear in the middle of a big page (it would need to be cropped).

Even if it needs improvement, it answers your question (display a LaTeX document in a Tkinter program) and should give you a starting point.