Pipeline

I decided to use jinja as its documentation mention it.

The hard part is the \(\LaTeX\) generation using python. This require few modification in jinja templates.

Jinja modification

Jinja is made to generate html files. Directives (such as statements and expressions) use delimiters that are not entirely compatible with \(\LaTeX\) file.

There is a widely used way <http://eosrei.net/articles/2015/11/latex-templates-python-and-jinja2-generate-pdfs>_ to overcome this problem written by Brad Erikson.

A basic minimal working example is the following:

• The \(LaTeX\) template:

templates/document.tex:

\documentclass{article}

\BLOCK{ for pkg in packages }
\usepackage{\VAR{pkg}}
\BLOCK{ endfor }

\begin{document}

\BLOCK{ block content } \BLOCK{ endblock }

\end{document}

• The code to use it

import os.path

import jinja2

latex_jinja_env = jinja2.Environment(
    block_start_string="\BLOCK{",
    block_end_string="}",
    variable_start_string="\VAR{",
    variable_end_string="}",
    comment_start_string="\#{",
    comment_end_string="}",
    line_statement_prefix="%%",
    line_comment_prefix="%#",
    trim_blocks=True,
    autoescape=False,
    loader=jinja2.FileSystemLoader(os.path.abspath("templates")),
)

doc = latex_jinja_env.get_template("document.tex")
simpledoc = doc.render(packages=["amsmath", "makeidx"])

with open("/tmp/doc.tex", "w") as fd:
    fd.write(simpledoc)

• The produced file

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{makeidx}

\begin{document}


\end{document}

Yes, I know, there is no content, but is uses several jinja mechanisms:

• a for loop to specify packages used
• jinja block
• jinja variable

I don't understand the difference between block and statement. In both cases it consists of executable code lines.

Template specificity

%% extends "document.tex"
%% set packages = packages + ["array"] if packages else ["array",]

%% if not headers
%% set headers = table[0].keys()
%% set ncol = headers|length
%% endif

\BLOCK{ block content }
\begin{tabular}{ l|*{\VAR{ ncol }}{l}|}
\cline{2-\VAR{ ncol + 1 }}
\BLOCK{ for h in headers }& \VAR{ h } \BLOCK{ endfor }\\
\cline{2-\VAR{ ncol + 1 }}

\end{tabular}
\BLOCK{ endblock }

\BLOCK{ for col in headers }& \VAR{ row[col] } \BLOCK{ endfor }

The table template

Putting all together, the template is the following one:

templates/dict_writer.tex

%% extends "document.tex"
%% set packages = packages + ["array"] if packages else ["array",]

%% if not headers
%% set headers = table[0].keys()
%% set ncol = headers|length
%% endif

\BLOCK{ block content }
\begin{tabular}{ l|*{\VAR{ ncol }}{l}|}
\cline{2-\VAR{ ncol + 1 }}
\BLOCK{ for h in headers }& \VAR{ h } \BLOCK{ endfor }\\
\cline{2-\VAR{ ncol + 1 }}
%% for row in table
\BLOCK{ for col in headers }& \VAR{ row[col] } \BLOCK{ endfor }\\
%% endfor
\cline{2-\VAR{ ncol + 1 }}
\end{tabular}
\BLOCK{ endblock }

Alternatives

This method works but I think other alternatives are to be considered, especially if they avoid using too many languages:

• generate an html

There are several way to transfrom an html to a pdf, wkhtml2pdf is only one of them.

This method takes advantage of all the power of jinja to generate html.

• python library generating latex

The pandas library can export a DataFrame to latex, other libraries exist to generate latex but I didn't test them (yet)

• directly generate the latex in python

Quick beginner guide

1. use the tikz package adding in the preamble usepackage{tikz}
2. load the mindmap module using usetikzlibrary{mindmap}
3. begin your tikz picture with begin{tikzpicture}[mindmap] (you may add others options) and …