# Latex and Ruby

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/latex-and-ruby/94344>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [May 1, 2006, 9:13am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/latex-and-ruby/94344 "2006-05-01T09:13:37Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Jean-Etienne](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Jean-Etienne](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Jean-Etienne)\
**Post date:** [May 1, 2006, 9:13am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/latex-and-ruby/94344/1 "2006-05-01T09:13:37Z")

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Hi,

I am looking for a library to convert Latex content to png and PDF. Does  
anyone know a stable one?

Jean-Etienne

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**Author:** ![Jean-Etienne](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Jean-Etienne](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Jean-Etienne)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2006, 6:57pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/latex-and-ruby/94344/2 "2006-05-03T18:57:14Z")

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Jean-Etienne wrote:

> I am looking for a library to convert Latex content to png and PDF. Does  
> anyone know a stable one?

Seems like most folks rely on having the pdflatex executable  
laying around.

For example, see the generate\_pdf method of lib/rtex/view.rb  
in Bruce William’s RTex Rails plugin,

svn co [http://codefluency.com/svn/codefluency/rails/plugins/rtex](http://codefluency.com/svn/codefluency/rails/plugins/rtex)

and the convert\_tex\_to\_pdf method in Instiki’s app/controllers/  
wiki\_controller.rb, which you can see via,

[http://rubyforge.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/instiki/?root=instiki](http://rubyforge.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/instiki/?root=instiki)

Regards,

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Jean-Etienne](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Jean-Etienne](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Jean-Etienne)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2006, 6:57pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/latex-and-ruby/94344/3 "2006-05-03T18:57:24Z")

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On a slightly related topic: Does anyone know of a good way to show  
the differences between 2 PDF documents?

Thanks,  
Joe

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Jean-Etienne](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Jean-Etienne](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Jean-Etienne)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2006, 6:59pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/latex-and-ruby/94344/4 "2006-05-03T18:59:24Z")

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On Mon, 1 May 2006, Bothari wrote:

> On a slightly related topic: Does anyone know of a good way to show  
> the differences between 2 PDF documents?

If it’s for the textual content:

pdftotext file1.pdf # maybe with  
pdftotext file2.pdf # the -layout option  
diff file1.txt file2.txt

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Jean-Etienne](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Jean-Etienne](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Jean-Etienne)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2006, 6:57pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/latex-and-ruby/94344/5 "2006-05-03T18:57:26Z")

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On Mon, May 01, 2006 at 10:43:14PM +0900, Bothari wrote:

> On a slightly related topic: Does anyone know of a good way to show  
> the differences between 2 PDF documents?

No, but (even further off-topic) if the original source that the PDFs  
are generated from is DocBook XML, you could use Norman Walsh’s DiffMk  
to generate a version of the document including additional  
change-markup, which you can then render to HTML, IIRC.

dave