Configure output style

The serializer writes one of two output styles. spaced, the default, puts a space at every math token boundary and is byte-stable across releases, which suits datasets, caches, and tokenizers. compact writes LaTeX the way people usually type it, which suits display, review, and LLM prompts. The style option selects one for to_latex(), to_tokenized_latex(), and the module-level serialize function; it changes only the text layout, never the tree or the transform profile.

Choose a style#

import texform

doc = texform.Parser().parse(r"\begin{pmatrix}x_a^b&y\end{pmatrix}")["document"]
print(doc.to_latex())
print(doc.to_latex(style="compact"))

import { Parser } from 'texform';

const doc = new Parser().parse(String.raw`\begin{pmatrix}x_a^b&y\end{pmatrix}`).document;
console.log(doc.toLatex());
console.log(doc.toLatex({ style: 'compact' }));

\begin {pmatrix} x _ { a } ^ { b } & y \end {pmatrix}
\begin{pmatrix}x_a^b&y\end{pmatrix}

Compact drops every optional space, and the braces around a script that is a single TeX token, such as x_a or x_\alpha. It keeps the braces the syntax needs, as in x^{10}, and the spaces that separate tokens, as in \alpha x. After an unbraced script it adds one space before a letter or digit, so x_i y does not read as a subscript iy.

Compact output is idempotent and parses back to the same tree, but its exact layout may still improve across releases. Store spaced output when you compare results across versions.

Python takes style as a keyword argument; JavaScript takes it in an options object. Omitting it, or passing None or null, selects spaced, and an unknown value raises a configuration error instead of falling back to the default.

Normalize to a style#

normalize() always returns spaced output: its configuration covers parsing and transformation, not serialization. To normalize into compact LaTeX, run the stages yourself and serialize the transformed document:

import texform

engine = texform.TransformEngine(profile="corpus")
doc = engine.parse(r"a \over b")["document"]
engine.transform(doc)
print(doc.to_latex(style="compact"))  # \frac{a}{b}

import { TransformEngine } from 'texform';

const engine = new TransformEngine({ profile: 'corpus' });
const doc = engine.parse(String.raw`a \over b`).document;
engine.transform(doc);
console.log(doc.toLatex({ style: 'compact' })); // \frac{a}{b}

On the command line#

texform normalize takes the style as its own flag:

$ texform normalize --profile corpus --style compact 'a \over b'
\frac{a}{b}

--style accepts spaced (the default) or compact and applies to plain and --json output alike. It is not a --config key, because --config holds the same normalize configuration as the libraries. texform tokenize always tokenizes the spaced form.

A texform serve client sets style in the config of a configure request, beside profile, and the response's resolved reports the style in effect.

Next steps#