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I use Inkscape on Windows 7 platform. The principle to enter integrals and other mathematical symbols in Inkscape seems that the best thing to do and write them in a LaTeX compiler and cut them in Adobe PDF and paste it into Inkscape as figures.
Seems to be how you make pictures like this in Inkscape:
Is there any way to type LaTeX code directly into the text boxes Inkscape?
I know this question is utopian but it never hurts to try.
Here an Inkscape answer (summarizing the comments and some additional info). There are two ways to include LaTeX input.
Use the PDF+LaTeX export built into Inkscape
Advantage: Built-in, text stays editable
Disadvantage: Tex code can be typed but is not rendered, hence you may need to adjust the x,y positioning values later in your document --> annoying. Further, no line break is supported and you need to add a parbox or minipage or something later manually
Get the textext plug-in for Inkscape
Advantage: Render the code directly in you Inkscape document, including line breaks etc.
Disadvantage: Text becomes a SVG picture and can not be edited outside of Inkscape. No problem within Inkscape of course (objects can be edited by selecting them and using the Extensions->Textext menu item). This means after exporting and including the PDF in your document scaling your graphic will cause the text to scale too --> Possibly undesired effects
Installation details for textext:
Get the Inkscape plugin textext from here.
Installing it was a bit tricky for me (Inkscape 0.48). Installation instructions can be read here.
First I placed the extension files in the ~/.config/inkscape/extensions folder.
Then I installed Pstoedit via the Ubuntu package manager
After that I was presented with an Error from some python modules. This blog post solved it for me: Blogpost
After that I was able to select Extensions->Textext from my Inkscape menu bar. In the box that pops up type you LaTeX code just like you would in a normal document. You can specify a preamble file. I'd include any packages affecting the font in your document as the result is a SVG image of you TeX input, meaning that the font will not change if you decide to change your LaTeX-preamble at some point
sudo dnf install pdf2svg and copy plugin files to ~/.config/inkscape/extensions. Restart Inkscape. Results are perfect. As for the problem of "scaling" I recommend putting all the TeX object as "scale 1.0" and scale the figure instead.
textext over the pre-installed LaTeX extension for InkScape is that the LaTeX code for textext objects can be edited later and recompiled within InkScape later on. With the pre-installed LaTeX extension, you can only typeset code once; if you made an error, you must delete it and start over.
Mar 6, 2016 at 2:54
sudo apt-get install inkscape
Jun 30, 2019 at 22:44
Not an Inkscape answer!
You can use Ipe extensible drawing editor for this. I've used it extensively until I got the hang of TikZ but still use it for quick and dirty image preparing. It supports a lot of features implemented (linetypes, colors, transformations, coordinates, object snapping etc.). Also if you know Lua then you can directly hack into it and create your own stuff (I don't).
Here is how you can do as simple as possible. First you draw your shapes, polygons etc. (and also choose to enter LaTeX formula selected in the image below).
Then, after clicking OK either choose Run LaTeX from the menu or Ctrl+L then it finds your LaTeX distro and compiles that part as in the image below. You don't have to do it for each formula, you can keep them as source and then compile all at once.
After finishing your picture, you can save as XML, PDF or EPS formats. After two minutes I have this
Update 04-05-2022
Good news is that the built-in feature is back in Extensions > Render > Mathematics > LaTeX (pdflatex).... Just make sure you have installed a LaTeX distribution (preferably TinyTeX), Ghostscript, and pstoedit (pdf2svg), and you have added them all to your environment variable path as instructed here.
old answer
TL;DR install TexText from here
Unfortunately, the earlier answers on this page are mostly irrelevant or outdated. The question is about putting LaTeX math inside Inkscape, not including vector graphics inside Latex! Not to mention that the OPs' question is about Windows, not Linux. Here are some options:
In some versions of Inkscape, as explained here in Inkscape wiki, there used to be a "built-in support for including a LaTeX formula". You could just go to Extensions->Render->LaTeX ... and put your formula. For some reason, this has vanished as I have addressed the issue here! This feature hopefully will be back in the following versions (this tweet)
The TexText plugin has been the de facto tool for LaTeX rendering inside Inkscape. However, due to the lack of proper support, it has been forked several times:
The original extension by Pauli Virtanen official homepage
One of the most updated forks on GitHub repository and homepage on GitHub and page on Inkscape website. You need to be sure that you have LaTeX (on Windows MikText), pstoedit and Ghostscript installed and add them to the windows path on environment variables.
This fork on bitbucket
LaTeXText on GitHub and official page
Render->LaTeX available. It seems notto be there in 0.91.
Mar 23, 2018 at 18:40
LaTeX (pdflatex)...?
Jul 3 at 14:48
This is really a comment to Martin H, however, I don't have enough reputation to produce a comment at this time.
I followed your link to get textext, scrolled down to the Windows section of the installation heading. From there I followed the instructions to download and install 2. pstoedit and 3. ghostscript [I already run MikTeX (instruction number 1 on the list) through TeXMaker] I then downloaded and installed the 4. Textext. All of these installations were automatically performed in the usual way of downloading .exe files and clicking "next, next, ..., finish" through the dialog boxes.
At this point, following the advice given (by Martin H), I was unsure what was meant in his answer by "I placed the extension files in the ~/.config/inkscape/extensions folder"
Opening Inkscape at this time gives me the TeX Text option under the Extensions menu. However, clicking this yields the same error as encountered by Martin H. Following the link for the blog post provided and then the steps to fix this error, I open Inkscape only to get the error:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "textext.py", line 936, in <module>
e.affect()
File "C:\Program Files (x86)\Inkscape\share\extensions\inkex.py", line 215, in affect
self.effect()
File "textext.py", line 349, in effect
% ';\n'.join(converter_errors))
RuntimeError: No Latex -> SVG converter available:
Pdf2Svg: Command pdf2svg failed: [Error 2] The system cannot find the file specified;
PstoeditPlotSvg: Command pstoedit -help failed: [Error 2] The system cannot find the file specified;
SkConvert: Command pstoedit failed: [Error 2] The system cannot find the file specified
No Latex -> SVG converter available shows you that pstoedit installation may not have been successful. You can test it by opening a command window in Windows via Windows start button-> Run type cmd click ok and then in the console window that opens type pstoedit, hit enter and see if the program can be found. If not, locate pstoedit.exe on your system and add the path of it to the environmental variables in Windows
LaTeXText is an Inkscape extension based on the outdated textext extension mentioned in the previous answers.
This is relevant for Inkscape version >= 0.91 on Linux and Mac, and version >=0.92.2 on Windows.
The installation instructions are on the Github page, and are fairly verbose.
I'll just demonstrate:
The Github page has installation instructions and .gif of how it works.
The extension is found (after installation) in Extensions -> Render -> Text with LaTeX (GTK3).
For example: the output after applying the extension:
The LaTeX rendered output is produced in a separate layer (named Rendered Latex), while the original LaTeX code is left in the original layer (Layer 1 in my case). You can see this if you activate the Layers window (Ctrl+Shift+L shortcut in Inkscape).
Just hide the original layer (click the eye icon in the Layers window) in the final output, then you'll be left with the desired rendered output.
I'm adding this answer because as far as I can tell it gives you everything you need and it is definitely the simplest:
This is superior to simply screencapping latex output as it is resizeable etc. and works nicely with inkscape when it is an svg.
To summarize, complete and update some of the recent ('16) answers, here is a step by step installation of tex text in ubuntu 16.04 (can surely be derived to other linux distributions) and a mini guide to using tex text in current (0.91) version of inksape. Prerequisite: texlive and pdflatex, then:
sudo apt-get install texlive pstoeditsudo apt-get install pdf2svg~/.config/inksape/extensions (not the unzipped folder as a whole, but its content)Then tex text is found in Extensions -> Tex Text
Upon starting I get these 2 frames:
In the converter dropdown menu you have the choice between ps2Svg, ps2edit, Inkscape, Inkscape (+text-to-path).
As an example, type the following in the Text field:
\(\displaystyle\frac{\pi^2}{6}=\lim_{n \to \infty}\sum_{k=1}^n \frac{1}{k^2}\) (the default sample from the extensions -> render -> Latex...)
This is what I get with the above mentioned converters:
ps2edit: nothing is produced
Inkscape:
By comparison, the Extensions -> Render -> LaTeX gives:
To modify an equation, select it and go back to tex text: Extensions -> Tex Text and make sure to select the same converter as the one you used for originally writing the equation.
The by far easiest to install and use tool I found is WriteTex, also mentioned in Foad's answer.
All you need to do, as explained in WriteTex, and I quote, is:
"Just drop writetex.py and writetex.inx to Inkscape extension folder, which is normally at $inkscapeFolder$/share/extensions. Make sure you have at least one LaTeX command and one PDFtoSVG converter are in your path."
Works like a charm :-)
