TexText on Linux

For systems with Inkscape installed from a package manager

Preparation

  1. Make sure that Inkscape 1.3 is installed on your system via your favorite package manager. (You can also use older Inkscape versions, see below)

    On Ubuntu 22.04 + 20.04 and its derivates the most recent version of Inkscape 1.3 is not part of the default distribution. Perform the following steps to install it:

    • Remove any old version of Inkscape

      sudo apt remove inkscape

    • Add the Inkscape repository to your apt package manager:

      sudo add-apt-repository ppa:inkscape.dev/stable
sudo apt update

    • Install Inkscape 1.3

      sudo apt install inkscape

    Check if it is able to launch. You can verify this by invoking inkscape --version from a terminal. It should output a version number greater or equal then 1.2.

    Warning

    TexText will not function if you installed Inkscape 1.3 via SNAP or FLATPACK. The reason is that Inkscape 1.3 will run in sandboxed mode in these environments and, hence, cannot access you LaTeX distribution to compile your snippets! This is a conceptional problem of snap/ flatpack, not of TexText.

  2. Make sure that an operational LaTeX distribution and/ or typst is installed on your system. You can verify this by invoking at least one of pdflatex --version, xelatex --version, typst --version and lualatex --version in a terminal.

  3. Optional: If you wish to have syntax highlighting and some other nice features enabled in the TexText-Gui install GTKSourceView:

    sudo apt install gir1.2-gtksource-3.0

Download and install TexText

  1. If you are on Debian Bullseye or later refer to section Installation on Debian Bullseye and later. Otherwise download the most recent package from the Github release page (direct links: zip-file for Linux, tgz-file for Linux). In case you are using Inkscape 1.2, 1.1, or 1.0 download TexText 1.8.2!

  2. Extract the package and change into the created directory.

  3. Run setup.py from your terminal:

    python3 setup.py

    It will copy the required files into the user’s Inkscape configuration directory (usually this is ~/.config/inkscape/extensions)

    Setup will inform you if some of the prerequisites needed by TexText are missing. Install them. If setup complains about missing GTK or Tkinter bindings please go to Manual installation of the GUI library bindings.

    See Advanced installation options for further options provided by setup.py.

Note

In case of installation problems refer to the Installation problems in the Troubleshooting section!

You are done. Now you can consult the usage instructions.

For systems using an AppImage of Inkscape

Preparation

  1. Download the AppImage from the Inkcape homepage

  2. Make it executable

    chmod +x Inkscape-dc2aeda-x86_64.AppImage

  3. Test it:

    ./Inkscape-dc2aeda-x86_64.AppImage

    (Replace Inkscape-dc2aeda-x86_64.AppImage by the correct file name.)

Download and install TexText

  1. Download the most recent package from the Github release page (direct links: zip-file for Linux, tgz-file for Linux)

  2. Extract the package and change into the created directory.

  3. Install TexText via the the command

    python3 setup.py --skip-requirements-check --inkscape-executable /path/to/your/appimage/Inkscape-dc2aeda-x86_64.AppImage

    (Replace Inkscape-dc2aeda-x86_64.AppImage by the correct file name.) It will copy the required files into the user’s Inkscape configuration directory (usually this is ~/.config/inkscape/extensions)

  4. Install the GTK-GUI bindings as explained here: Manual installation of the GUI library bindings

You are done. Now you can consult the usage instructions.

Manual installation of the GUI library bindings

In the case that Inkscape 1.3 has not been automatically installed together with the necessary Python GUI bindings or if you are using an Inkscape AppImage you need to install them manually. You have two options: GTK3 (recommended) or Tkinter.

Installation on Debian Bullseye and later

TexText can be installed directly from the official repositories:

sudo apt install inkscape-textext

Then consult the usage instructions.