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LaTeX-on-HTTP: L
AT
EX as a cloud service for application developers
TUG2020
Yoan Tournade
July 26, 2020
Why are not PDFs from IT systems and applications more decently typesetted?
(They are generally not)
LaTeX-on-HTTP: L A T EX as a cloud service for application - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
LaTeX-on-HTTP: L A T EX as a cloud service for application - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
LaTeX-on-HTTP: L A T EX as a cloud service for application developers TUG2020 Yoan Tournade July 26, 2020 Why are not PDFs from IT systems and applications more decently typesetted? (They are generally not) Of course... Because developers do
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Of course...
Because developers do not use L
AT
EX
... in their applications
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Why then developers do not use L
AT
EX
for automating PDF edition?
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Reason #1: Customs
Cultural glass walls
L
A
T EX as the "academia thing"
◮ Known as the hegemonic paper tool ◮ But not thought as a solution for web developments L
A
T EX mental bucket: Webapps mental bucket:
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Reason #2: Technical barriers
Mainly runtime requirements
L
AT
EX runtime requirements are heavy and complex
◮ Who will argue with DevOps about adding several hundred megabytes (or several gigabytes) of dependencies for "some nice PDFs"?
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Reason #3: Knowledge
About documentation and lazyness
Developers love copy-pastable code to get started
◮ how to call L
A
T EX properly from the application? ◮ also how to manage CTAN packages? updates? ◮ missing Hello World and typical scenario code snippets
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If not L
A
T EX...
What developers (currently) use to edit PDFs
in their applications?
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HTML/CSS to PDF converters
Libraries: ... Cloud services: ... Sample:
import weasyprint weasyprint.HTML( "document.html" ).write_pdf( "output.pdf", stylesheets=[ weasyprint.CSS("document.css") ] )
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"Instruction-based" PDF generators
in the developer native languages
Libraries: ... Sample:
require(’fpdf/fpdf.php’); $pdf = new FPDF(); $pdf->AddPage(); $pdf->SetFont(’Arial’,’B’,16); $pdf->Cell(40,10, ’Hello World!’); $pdf->Output();
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Ok now...
What can we do
for developers to
(more frequently)
use L
AT
EX in their applications?
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LaTeX-on-HTTP
Putting L
A
T EX behind a developer-friendly
HTTP API
... with the convenience of modern cloud services
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Demo time
Access demo code on GitHub
Scenario:
We’re a web developer. Our boss asked us to integrate PDF edition in his freelancing platform. The aim is to create good-looking invoices and proposals. It’s Wednesday 2:30pm. It must be finished before next week.
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Fulfilling the promise
A project still in development
Future works:
◮ creating high-level documentations; ◮ presentation website for promotion; ◮ language libraries for easier integrations; ◮ also: addressing scaling, security, ...
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Acknowledgments
Jonathan Fine
for inviting me to talk
Inspirations:
◮ Andrey Lushnikov’s LaTeX.Online; ◮ ShareLaTeX/Overleaf CLSI.
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Read more, contribute and report issues github.com/YtoTech/latex-on-http Live interractive demo latex-http-demo.ytotech.com Feedbacks and cheering welcome y@yoantournade.com