compile latex source into unicode string

Question

I have a bunch of one-line LaTeX strings which I would like to compile into unicode strings (preferably using Python, but any solution will do). Specifically achieve

in: '\"o{A}c'
out: 'öAc'

(I realize there is latexcodec, but it I found it unreliable so I'm looking for an alternative approach.)

I figure the only reliable way to do so is to fall back to a system LaTeX compiler, specifically

• to compile the string into a PDF, and
• to read the output from the PDF file.

Is there a more streamlined approach to this? For example: Is is possible to compile LaTeX into a unicode string in memory rather than a PDF?

Answer 1

Pandoc does a decent job for not too complicated documents. Try

echo "\\\"o{A}c" | pandoc -f latex -t plain

or, in Python,

def latex_to_unicode(latex_string):
    '''Convert a LaTeX string to unicode.
    '''
    # Use pandoc for the job
    try:
        # This works in Python 3.4+
        return subprocess.check_output(
            ['pandoc', '-f', 'latex', '-t', 'plain'],
            input=latex_string
            )
    except TypeError:  # unexpected keyword 'input'
        p = subprocess.Popen(
            ['pandoc', '-f', 'latex', '-t', 'plain'],
            stdin=subprocess.PIPE,
            stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
            stderr=subprocess.PIPE
            )
        stdout, stderr = p.communicate(latex_string)
        return stdout.replace('\n', ' ').strip().decode('utf-8')