Latex and Markdown To Canvas LMS Pages

This tool converts LaTeX (.tex) and Markdown (.md) files to plain HTML that can be used as a basis for pages in Canvas LMS.

Some of the features

• Syntax highlighting for code (without CSS)
• Equation numbers and referencing (for TeX files)
• Citations via the \cite{} command and a .bib file (for TeX files)
• Automatic table of contents

Markdown

If you do not need equation support the tool can also be applied to markdown files. In this case the tool reduces to pandoc with an inplace syntax highlighter, so no additional CSS or HTML head is needed.

Usage

The tool is made to be as easy as possible, to see what it can do run

./textToHtml.py input.tex

or on windows

python3 textToHtml.py input.tex #it might be that python3 does not work use python instead

This will create a html page called output.html, the contents of this file can be copy pasted in the HTML editor of a Canvas page or viewed in a browser (NB in the last case not all features might work). The generated page will give a more detailed explanation of what the tool can do and how to customize the output.

Markdown usage

./textToHtml.py input.md

Example output (page fragment)

Dependencies and Install

The tool is made in python and based around pandoc, hence a working python version is necessary. Pandoc can be installed via this link, there is an installer, but also instructions for how to do it via the command line.

The syntax highlighting and equation numbering depend on two other python packages pandocfilters and pygments. They can be installed with pip3 install <package_name>

For Windows Users

Start off by installing pandoc. Just follow the installer instructions.

Next open a powershell (windows button + X, followed by I), type python3 and press enter. If python is installed it will open and you can exit again, type exit() followed by an enter. If python is not installed it will lead you to the microsoft store where you can get/download it, press the button and let windows do the rest.

Now that we have python installed return to the powershell and type pip3 install pandocfilters press enter and repeat for pip3 install pygments.

Next navigate (in powershell with cd) to the folder where the files of this repository are and type python3 textToHtml.py input.tex (if python3 is not recognized try python) and press enter. An html file called output.html is now created, copy paste its contents in the HTML editor of a Canvas page and you should now see the example page.

Files

Every pandoc filter and template has its own file, these files should be accessible to the program while running. The easiest way to achieve this is by putting them in the working directory. The files needed are

• highlightCode.py provides syntax highlighting
• addEquationNumbers.py provides equation numbers
• canvasTemplate.html provides a template for the page we generate. In the example template I have used it to set the width of the page to 900 pixels.