Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Explicit setting of font size

If you want the font size of your compiled LaTeX code to be of a specific size then you have to do two things:

  1. Set the scale factor of the node to 1.0
  2. Enter your code as following if you want to have a 14pt sized font for the text This is my Text:
\fontsize{14pt}{1em}{\selectfont This is my Text.}

The resulting text should be of equal height as if has been typeset directly in Inkscape.

Font size example

Selection of special fonts

Usually your code is typeset in the LaTeX standard fonts. As usual, you can use commands like \textbf{}, \textsf{} etc. in your code. If you want to select a special font, e.g. the beloved Times New Roman from MS Word, then proceed as follows:

  1. Open the file default_packages.tex which resides in the extension subdirectory (%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Inkscape\extensions\textext on Windows, ~/.config/inkscape/extensions/textext on Linux) and enter the following two lines:
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{Times New Roman}
  1. Save the file and recompile your node. You can also define different preamble files and load them dependent on your node, see Dialog overview.

Using special characters like German Umlaute (äüö) etc.

If you want to use special characters which are not understood by plain LaTeX in your nodes you have two options:

  1. Include the directive \usepackage[utf-8]{inputenc} in the preamble file, see Preamble file.
  2. Use xelatex or lualatex as TeX command, see Available TeX compilers.

Using TexText with older Inkscape versions

Unfortunately the current TexText release does not work with Inkscape versions 0.91.x and 0.48.x, at least under Windows. The reason is the underlying Python interpreter which must be of version 2.7. If you need to work with an older Inkscape version you are encouraged to use TexText 0.8.x. You can download it from here https://github.com/textext/textext/releases .

These are the required PyGTK-Packages (Windows):

Installation instructions:

Note

If you manage to run Inkscape < 0.92 with Python 2.7 you can use the most recent version of TexText.

Extension not shown in the Inkscape Extension menu

If the the TexText entry is not shown in the Extension menu of Inkscape proceed with the following checks:

  1. Make sure that the setup procedure completed successfully. Double check its final output.

  2. Launch Inkscape, open the Edit menu, select Preferences, then select System in the tree-view to the left and check the entry User exentsions in the right part of the window. Its entry should be

    • on Linux/ MacOS: /home/[your user name]/.config/inkscape/extensions
    • on Windows: C:\Users\[Your user name]\AppData\Roaming\inkscape\extensions

    If you use different locations you must run the setup script with the --inkscape-extensions-path option.

    Linux/ MacOS:

    python setup.py --inkscape-extensions-path /path/to/your/extensions

    Windows

    setup_win.bat /p:"--inkscape-extensions-path 'C:\Path\to your extensions'"

    Alternatively you can select the correct directory in the GUI installer.

Windows: Compilation fails with empty error dialog

If the compilation of your LaTeX code fails with an empty error dialog and the expanded view of stderr (see LaTeX and toolchain errors) shows an entry like

Sorry, but pdflatex.exe did not succeed.

The log file hopefully contains the information to get MiKTeX going again:

the most likely reason is that MiKTeX tries to install a package on the fly and fails to do so. Manually compile your code as described in Manual use of the toolchain. Then you will see what goes wrong so you can fix it. See also issue #48.