EqualX: The Power of LaTeX in a Nicely Pre-Configured Interface

A few weeks ago while putting together my elevator pitch video I found myself in need of a few nicely-typeset equations to show in it. I knew the solution would involve \(\LaTeX\) (which I've written in praise of before), but many \(\LaTeX\) editors are geared towards writing substantial papers. There's a bit of boilerplate code you need to set up, and it feels like overkill if you just want a picture of a few equations, as I did. (It's much like setting up a webpage: it's not a problem for a substantial page, but if you just want to put a sentence or two on it then your boilerplate code will be longer than your content!)

Thankfully while looking around online I stumbled upon a program called EqualX which is dedicated to taking care of that initial busywork and letting you simply create equations and formulae and export the result to seven different formats, including JPG, PNG, PDF, and (most importantly for my purposes) SVG.

 The eagle-eyed may notice the presence of \(\tau\) instead of \(\pi\)…

This picture shows the exceedingly simple interface. You just write your math in the bottom box, and by default EqualX will compile what's written there every one and a half seconds after you've finished typing into what you see in the middle box (though this behavior is configurable, and you can turn off the auto-updating if you like and just update it manually). When you're done, simply right-click in the middle box to set your export format, then save your output it to an image. Easy as \(\pi\)!

Okay, even I feel bad about that pun. A hui hou, folks!