Exporting Links to LaTeX

Exporting from Tinderbox
1

Is there any way to replace some text before or after exporting it with ^text^?
I have a TBX file with lots of notes that I want to use for a book (LaTeX→PDF) and a website. To keep the content and styling consistent, I keep the notes free from code and use only basic text formatting in the text editor. For the LaTeX export I use a LaTeX prototype with the appropriate markup in the Export Inspector. For the advanced formatting I wrote a LaTeX Template that works very well for me.
Now I have some web links inside my notes that export to:

(<a href="https://abc.de">my link</a>)

which confuses LaTeX. I’d like to change them to LaTeX hyperref syntax:

\href{https://abc.de}{my link}.

Of course, I can replace the link code using RegEx in my LaTeX template by replacing ^text^ with

^value($Text.replace("\(<a href="(.+)">(.+)</a>\)","\\href{$1}{$2}"))^

but then I lose the markup provided by ^text^.
Any idea how to solve this?

2

This topic hasn’t come up for a bit but you might want to check this article on using LaTeX. I think others are using Markdown-based ‘HTML’ export to Pandoc and exporting LaTeX from there (but I’m less clear on the detail).

3

Thanks for the prompt reply! This article covers the basics but warns that some aspects of HTML markup, such as the link formatting, cannot be altered. But meanwhile I’ve found a solution…
Here’s how:

  1. Define a string attribute $Text_LaTeX for the “top level” note used for exporting
  2. Set up another LaTeX template "LaTeX postprocessing":

^action($Text_LaTeX=exportedString(this,"/Templates/LaTeX document"))^ ^value($Text_LaTeX.replace('\(<a href="(.+)">(.+)</a>\)',"\\footnote{\\href{$1}{$2}}"))^

  1. Change the Export Template of the aforementioned “top level” note to the newly created Export Template.

This Template will do the following:

  • translate the document to LaTeX according to the given markup rules
  • store this text (which is plain text, but still contains the HTML syntax for the Links) in the $Text_LaTeX attribute
  • export the content of this attibute after replacing the HTML with LaTeX links

I am surprised HOW smoothly this works and how fast Tinderbox manages the conversion. The result is displayed immediately in the export tab.

Thanks for your hint!

2 Likes