December 4, 2011

Small utility to easily incorporate LaTeX equations in Evernote (or anything else)

I realize that such utilities already exist and that I'm not a good programmer, but this does exactly what I want and nothing more.  Click on the following link to download a lightweight program what converts TeX snippets into a pasteable image by utilizing the Google Chart service.

Download TeXer (updated to fix a bug with Windows XP on 12/05/2011)

Note:  This application requires the full .NET Framework 4.

When you first launch it, you will be presented with the following:


Press a key to set the global hotkey and you will be presented with this:


By pressing the hotkey-combination, you can show/hide this window.  You can set a new hotkey by pressing the "Set hotkey button".

Type some TeX into the textbox and an output image will be fetched and displayed.  This image will be automatically placed in your clipboard.  The image size can be controlled with the image height control:

Type your TeX
Paste the result!
Press Ctrl-Enter after done typing to hide the window (or use the hotkey).  The following procedure can be used to rapidly get an image of an equation into your Evernote post:

  1. Press the hotkey you assigned to show the program.
  2. Type the TeX.
  3. Ctrl-Enter
  4. Paste the image
A list of previously typed TeX snippets is recorded in the history dropdown box so you can get back to whatever you might've been working on before without having to retype everything.  Hopefully some will find this useful!
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12 comments:

  1. Arthur09:52

    THANK YOU SO MUCH. I'm a graduate student in clinical psychology who is teaching an undergrad stats class (and who has to take notes in my own stats classes). All of the other solutions (e.g. using online editors, other programs) were almost too clunky to be practical, especially if I needed to write up an equation on the fly. Your utility is exactly what I would have written if I was able to program one myself. If you're ever in Atlanta, find Arthur Ryan at Emory University and you, sir, will enjoy a beer (or several) on me.

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    Replies
    1. Brian10:31

      Hah! I knew there must be someone out there that might find this useful! I haven't done anything with this program in a while but if you encounter any bugs or anything, let me know!

      Delete
  2. Nicolas07:52

    what would be very cool would be to publish the source code on github

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  3. Hero Miles01:40

    Didn't work for me. I have Windows 7

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  4. Birdie05:58

    I'm sorry to tell, that I too could not make it work with Win 7. After I hit "run" nothing happens. Kind regards Birgitte

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  5. Justin13:09

    I'm running Win7 Professional. To get it to work you must install the .NET framework as the post says. Then it runs flawless. Thanks!

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  6. Void Serpent16:32

    Works for me on Win 7, but it would be good to have a reference page of commands that differ or that Texer doesn't support. So far I know \dfrac{}{}, \square, and \Box do not work.

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    1. Void Serpent16:41

      So I did discover that \boxempty was the replacement for \square and \Box (\box little 'b' ist the same as \boxast) but that implies "stmaryrd Binary Operators" are the default commands in a lot of cases where the 'common' ones are not working in Texer.

      Delete
  7. Al20:40

    I have been looking for something like this for 2 days. Works great with win 10 and onenote! I'm finally free of onenote equation editor, which does nothing I tell it to. Not sure why, but the exponents show up a little low, easily fixed with ^^ instead of ^. Thanks a lot, VERY useful and simple.

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  8. Unknown11:39

    Is it possible to output historical LaTex text to a ASCII file so that we could search and manage them easier

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  9. Unknown10:06

    Thank you for this great utility. I have been looking for something to do exactly this.

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  10. Unknown14:12

    WOW, this is just awesome. Congratulations! I've been looking for a functionality like that for ages and it's working perfectly.

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