Hello, currently the printing.preview function needs an LaTeX installation to compile the expression to an image/document. Given that a LaTeX installation is not always available, and matplotlib has already implemented a sizeable subset of the most common LaTeX math commands, would it be possible to provide an alternative preview function that does not depend on LaTeX itself?
A rough example of how this could work: def alternative_preview(expr, **kwargs): """Show rendered preview of expr""" from matplotlib import pyplot as plt latex_str = r"$ %s $" % sp.latex(expr, **kwargs) # matplotlib does not recognize \operatorname, but does work with \mathrm latex_str = latex_str.replace("operatorname","mathrm") plt.figure(figsize = (15, 2)) plt.text(0.5, 0.5, latex_str, fontsize=30, horizontalalignment='center') plt.axis('off') plt.show() Maybe it would be possible to check whether LaTeX is installed, and fall back to this if it is not. I reckon most sympy users also have matplotlib installed, so this additional dependency would be acceptable, i.e. users can "choose their dependency", matplotlib or LaTeX. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sympy" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sympy+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sympy@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sympy?hl=en-US. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.