scribble-math/dockers/texcmp

How to compare against LaTeX

The tools in this directory can be used to create reference images using LaTeX, and to compare them against the screenshots taken from a browser.

Execution environment

Docker environment

If you don't want to ensure the presence of all required tools, or want to make sure that you create reproducible results, simply run

dockers/texcmp/texcmp.sh

from the root of your KaTeX directory tree. This will build a suitable docker image unless such an image already exists. It will then use a container based on that image to generate all the images described below.

Note that the files and directories created in the source tree from within the docker will be owned by root, so you might have trouble deleting them later on. Be sure you can obtain superuser permissions on your computer or know someone who can, just to be safe.

Native environment

If you want to avoid the overhead of creating a docker container, or the even larger overhead of setting up docker and creating the initial image, then you may instead execute the commands

cd dockers/texcmp
npm install
node texcmp.js

from the root of your KaTeX directory tree. Required tools include the pdflatex tool of a standard TeX distribution as well as the convert tool from ImageMagick.

Note that this approach will use /tmp/texcmp as a temporary directory. The use of a single directory name here can lead to conflicts if multiple developers on the same machine try to use that directory.

Also note that different software configurations can lead to different results, so if reproducibility is desired, the Docker approach should be chosen.

Generated files

After running either of the above commands, you will find two (possibly new) subdirectories inside test/screenshotter, called tex and diff.

Rasterized documents

test/screenshotter/tex will contain images created by pdflatex by plugging the test case formula in question into the template test/screenshotter/test.tex. This is essentially our reference of how LaTeX renders a given input.

Difference images

test/screenshotter/diff will contain images depicting the difference between the LaTeX rendering and the Firefox screenshot. Black areas indicate overlapping print. Green areas are black in LaTeX but white in Firefox, while it's the other way round for red areas. Colored input is first converted to grayscale, before being subject to the coloring just described. The pictures will be aligned in such a way as to maximize the overlap between the two versions (i.e. the amount of black output). The result will then be trimmed so it can easily be pasted into bug reports.

Command line arguments

Both texcmp.sh and texcmp.js will accept the names of test cases on the command line. This can be useful if one particular test case is affected by current development, so that the effects on it can be seen more quickly.

Examples:

dockers/texcmp/texcmp.sh Sqrt SqrtRoot
node dockers/texcmp/texcmp.js Baseline