A Jekyll plugin for blazing-fast server-side cached LaTeX rendering, with support for macros. Enjoy the comfort of LaTeX and Markdown without cluttering your site with bloated JavaScript. This project is endorsed by KaTeX.org.

Features

• Renders LaTeX formulas during Jekyll rendering
• Works without any client-side JavaScript
• Is faster than any other server-side Jekyll LaTeX renderer
• Supports user-defined global macros
• Has I/O-efficient caching system
• Dynamically informs about the number of expressions during rendering
• Is very easy to setup
• Doesn't interfere with Jekyll workflow and project structure
• Marks invalid expressions in document, printing its location during rendering
• Is highly configurable with sensible defaults
• Makes sure that cache does not contain expression rendered with outdated configuration
• Supports two major LaTeX notations

Usage

Jektex supports both the built-in Kramdown math notation, and the newer LaTeX-only math notation.

Kramdown notation

Inline formula
Put formula between two pairs of dollar signs ($$) inside of paragraph.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur $$e^{i\theta}=\cos(\theta)+i\sin(\theta)$$
adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.

Display formula
Put formula between two pairs of dollar signs ($$) and surround it with two empty lines.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor
incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.

$$ \left[ \frac{-\hbar^2}{2\mu}\nabla^2 + V(\mathbf{r},t)\right] \Psi(\mathbf{r},t) $$

Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex
ea commodo consequat.

Why Jektex does not use conventional single $ for inline formulas and double $$ for display mode?
This is how kramdown (Jekyll's markdown parser) works so I decided to respect this convention. It makes this plugin more consistent and universal. See this issue for more context.

LaTex math mode notation

Inline formula
Put formula between two escaped brackets \( \). Its position in the text does not matter.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur \(e^{i\theta}=\cos(\theta)+i\sin(\theta)\)
adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.

Display formula
Put formula between two escaped square brackets \[ \]. Its position in the text does not matter.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor
incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.

\[ \left[ \frac{-\hbar^2}{2\mu}\nabla^2 + V(\mathbf{r},t)\right] \Psi(\mathbf{r},t) \]

Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex
ea commodo consequat.

Logo macro

There is a build in macro for jektex logo. You can use it as \jektex.

Config

Jektex si highly configurable via your _config.yml file.

Disabling cache
You can disable caching with disable_disk_cache = true in _config.yml. Caching is enabled by default. You can find more information on Jekyll's official website.

Setting cache location
By default, Jektex cache will be saved in .jekyll-cache directory. This results in its deletion when you call jekyll clean. To prevent cache deletion or to change the cache location, you can specify cache_dir in _config.yml:

jektex:
  cache_dir: ".jektex-cache"

Ignoring files
By default, Jektex tries to render LaTeX in all files rendered by Jekyll. This can sometimes be undesirable, for example when rendering an RSS feed with excerpts containing LaTeX. Jektex solves this by using the ignore option:

jektex:
  ignore: ["*.xml", "README.md", "_drafts/*" ]

You can use conventional wild cards using *. This example configuration ignores all .xml files, README.md and all files in the _drafts directory.

Another way to ignore specific posts is setting the jektex attribute in front matter to false:

---
title: "How Jektex works"
category: "Development"
jektex: false
layout: post
---

Setting jektex tag to true or not setting at all will result in Jektex rendering LaTeX expressions in that post.

Using macros
You can define global macros:

jektex:
  macros:
    - ["\\Q", "\\mathbb{Q}"]
    - ["\\C", "\\mathbb{C}"]

And yes, you have to escape the backlash (\) with another backlash. This is due to the yaml specification.

You can define macros with parameters:

jektex:
  macros:
    - ["\\vec", "\\mathbf{#1}"]
    - ["\\addBar", "\\bar{#1}"]

This simulates behaviour of LaTeX \newcommand.

Silencing Jektex output
Jektex periodically informs the user about rendered/cached equations. If this is not desired, you can set the silent option (false by default).

jektex:
  silent: true

Complete examples
Recommended config:

jektex:
  cache_dir: ".jektex-cache"
  ignore: ["*.xml"]
  silent: false
  macros:
    - ["\\Q", "\\mathbb{Q}"]
    - ["\\C", "\\mathbb{C}"]

Having no configuration is equivalent to this:

jektex:
  cache_dir: ".jekyll-cache"
  ignore: []
  silent: false
  macros: []

Installation

This plugin is available as a RubyGem.

Using bundler
Add Jektex to your Gemfile:

group :jekyll_plugins do
    gem "jektex"
end

and run bundle install

Without bundler
Run gem install jektex

After installation
Add Jektex to your plugin list in your _config.yml file

plugins:
    - jektex

and don't forget to add katex.min.css to you HTML head:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/[email protected]/dist/katex.min.css" integrity="sha384-MlJdn/WNKDGXveldHDdyRP1R4CTHr3FeuDNfhsLPYrq2t0UBkUdK2jyTnXPEK1NQ" crossorigin="anonymous">

It is much better practice to download the css file and load it as an asset from your server directly. You can find more information on KaTeX's website.

Contributions and bug reports

Feel free to report any bugs or even make feature request in issues on official repository. I am opened for pull requests as well.