Detexify

Detexify is a great resource if you want to find a common or perhaps an unusual symbol to insert in to your $\LaTeX$ document.

When you go to the Detexify website [1] you are presented with a box to draw your symbol in. For this context I have the symbols tab selected.

detexify

So in the example below I have attempted to draw pi $\pi$. You can see that the website has attempted to find symbols resemble the one I have drawn.

detexify

It works for all sorts of things as per the two examples below. You don't need to be that good at drawing the symbol as some can be pretty complex.

detexify

detexify

This also works the other way. You can enter the name and the website will try and find the corresponding symbol as per below. In this case I am using the classify tab.

detexify

detexify

In both cases the website will tell you which package you can find this symbol in, and which $LaTeX$ command to use. You can find the package on CTAN [5] for more information on how to use that package. Or you can find the documentation on TeXLive [6].

Hopefully this article is helpful and will help. It is also designed to complement the tutorials at Learn LaTeX [3] which is a new resource.

This article can also complement the upcoming 2020 release of TeX Live [6).

#LaTeX, #Detexify,#symbols,#drawing,#help,#resource,#ctan.

Resources

1 Detexify 2 LaTeX Project 3 Learn LaTeX 4 Overleaf 5 CTAN 6 TeXLive

cc-by logo

Licenced under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)


MastodonPeertubeQoto sign up

Donate using Liberapay