Ask HN: Best way to include LaTeX math in presentation slides?

2 pointsjohn-titor3y ago1 comments

For my work I often have to present scientific topics to an audience. This includes a fair amount of notation in form of LaTeX math that has to go into the presentation slides.

So far, I have not found a good solution to efficiently include LaTeX in any presentation software.

There are plugins, but they rely on a local LaTeX distribution which, let's be honest, is always a pain to manage.

These days, I find myself using a browser app to render equations, then download and import the math as SVG or PNG. This somewhat works: The problem is that I have yet to find a web app that supports both, a wide range of commands (like https://katex.org/) or the export to SVG (like https://viereck.ch/latex-to-svg/).

Any suggestions how to optimize my workflow?

1 comments

lahvak3y ago

Have you considered using HTML based slides? That way the LaTeX math gets rendered at presentation time using MathJaX or KaTeX, so you don't need a local LaTeX. There are many options, my personal recommendation is Quarto (https://quarto.org/). Now when I think of it, I believe that Quarto actually may come with its own LaTeX distribution included (TinyTeX), so you should be able to create even pdf presentations with it without installing separate local LaTeX. I do not know for sure, one of the advantages of using Linux as your operating system is that there is no need to manage a LaTeX distribution, it's just there.

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