SkLaTeX is a Skencil plugin that enables the inclusion of LaTeX formulas, arrays, tables, lists and paragraphs in a Skencil document as a curved object.

SkLaTeX works with Skencil 0.6.x (i.e. Tkinter. SkLaTeX also uses Pmw). To my knowledge, the development version of Skencil (which uses GTK and not Tkinter) is the only Skencil version that has been ported to MS Windows. Hence, skLaTeX is only available to Unix platforms (which includes Linux and MacOS X). To find out more about Skencil you can visit the Skencil web site: http://www.skencil.org.

SkLaTeX has a user friendly interface. This interface has menu buttons that work with the text editor to make the creation of LaTeX source code easier. A postscript viewer is also part of the GUI (via PIL). This viewer allows the user to see the formula, table or text before placing the object. SkLaTeX also has a "Symbol Helper", that eliminates the arduous task of memorizing (or looking up) the hundreds of native LaTeX and AMS symbols.

In order to run skLaTeX in Skencil you will need to install the following external libraries and programs:

• Pmw   (For GUI.)

• teTeX 2.x and 3.x   (Note, teTeX 1.x will NOT work!. teTeX 3.0 is known to work under SuSE 9.3 and Debian.)

• pstoedit 3.x   (Versions 3.33 and 3.44 are known to work. 3.40 is known NOT to work. 3.42(patched) is reported to work. 3.41 and 3.43 are unknown.)

• Ghostscript   (Required by pstoedit. GS 7.x and 8.x are know to work.)

One advantage of using curves for the formula symbols is that the formula can be easily and accurately exported to other formats (mainly SVG and PDF). Also, the export files tend to be "light weight" and fonts do not poses a problem when it comes to printing. EPS placements cannot export to SVG and in general create heavier PDFs. Note that EPS files produce crisper PostScript and PDF previews than curves, but the outputs are equivalent.

Figures 1 to 7 (below) show screen shots of the current skLaTeX GUI and select images of interest.

Fig. 1: The SkLaTeX GUI

XFCE 3 Desktop under Solaris 8 Sparc. Geometry may vary for different Unix and Linux systems.

Fig. 2: Actual Skencil Canvas Preview

No "blocky" preview, bound box is transparent, all data is internal and no fonts to install.

Fig. 3: "Under the hood" of the skLaTeX Skencil object

The object has been ungrounded twice, combined and enlarged for effect

Fig. 4: Do fun things with formulas

Because the skLaTeX objects are just curves, they can be ungrounded and then manipulated like any other Skencil curve. Naturally, this will break the object.

Fig. 5: A LaTeX table and native Skencil objects can make a new "fancier" table

To make such a simple table in LaTeX alone would be extremly difficult. To make the table in Skencil alone would be doable, but there would be allot of bothersome aligning of formulas, text and objects.

Fig. 6: A LaTeX list combined with Skencil objects.

This feature can be useful. Note the in-line formulas.

Fig. 7: A skLaTeX paragraph.

Note that all text characters in the paragraph are curves.