aztex website

aztex is a program written in Python that provides a quick, simple way to create a professional-looking .pdf document. aztex is a compiler that compiles aztex language (very similar to Markdown) into LaTeX code. aztex can be used by people who do not know how to write fluently in LaTeX, would like a tool that can act as an introduction to the LaTeX syntax, or do not want to waste time worrying about some of the small intricacies of LaTeX.

Simply type "sudo pip install aztex" into your terminal (for Linux and OSX users). Or, clone this repository on GitHub.

To compile a text file written in markdown run:

$ aztex input.txt

or

 $ python aztex/main.py input.txt

To compile some text run:

$ aztex "some text"

or

 $ python aztex/main.py "some text"

To use our GUI run:

$ python aztex/AztexRunnerGUI.py

aztex was born as a an idea for the final project for the Software Design course at Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering by us: three first years (idgetto, jovanduy, thuctran289) in the spring semester of 2015. None of us knew how to use LaTeX efficiently, nor did we know anything about how compilers work, so we thought that aztex would be an interesting idea to explore and a great opportunity for us to expand our knowledge.

The creators of aztex decided on this as a stylistic choice.

aztex is written almost completely in pure Python. The only external library is wxPython, which is used in the framework of the GUI.

Anyone who wants to make a .pdf quickly! We (the creators of aztex) have envisioned that it will be used by people who want a way to quickly take notes that are organized in a nice-looking document, high school students that need to make professional-looking reports, and ourselves (we aren't even fluent in LaTeX)!

aztex is a compiler! aztex is made up of a front end and a back end. Basically, aztex works by first splitting up the aztex code into different tokens, or types of characters in the document, in the front end. aztex then reads through all of these tokens and figure out what type of element each token is; for instance, is a certain token simply a word? an equation? a link? a bolded word? Each of these elements has its own analogous LaTeX code, so, from the different elements, in the back end aztex is able to output LaTeX code! The code is all open source and avaiable on GitHub, so for a more in-depth understanding, please read through the code or look up how compilers work.