Python2TikZ
Faculty Mentors:
Description:
Figure generation is a critical component of the production and publication of scientific papers, but the current standard pipeline is extrememly crude: exporting PDF files from Python, Matlab, etc.; and then importing and rescaling them into the final document. This results in mismatched fonts, unreadable text, and generally bad figures. A powerful alternative would be to export figures as TikZ code, a language for generating vector graphics within LaTeX, which is the standard software system for typesetting documents in engineering. Some Python packages have been created for this purpose, but are no longer maintained and only semi-funcitonal. Our team will create (or fork) an open-sourse python package for turning Python figures into TikZ code. We anticipate that it will become the standard library for creating publication-ready figures, just as matplotlib has become the standard plotting library, for millions of engineers and scientists around the world.
Relevant Technologies:
- Software engineering
- Data visualization
- LaTeX/Python
Pre-requisite knowledge/skills:
- Python (at the level of creating classes and objects, and familiarity with the larger exosystem of pip, git, etc.)
- LaTeX (some familiarity; most knowledge can be acquired during the project)