• State "DONE" from "" 2010-02-06 Sat 10:04

It is now possible to generate .png and .pdf files when an appropriate :file header arguments is supplied to a latex source code block.

for example the following block will generate a small png of the latex logo using the mechanisms used for in-buffer preview of latex fragments.

#+begin_src latex :file latex-logo.png
  \LaTeX
#+end_src

To specify that the buffer-colors should not be used for example when exporting to an external file the :buffer no header argument can be passed to latex src blocks generating .png files.

The following more complex example uses the excellent pgf/tikz package to generate a complex figure (converted to png for web display).

#+begin_src latex :file fsa.pdf :packages '(("" "tikz")) :pdfwidth 3in :pdfheight 3in
  % Define block styles
  \usetikzlibrary{shapes,arrows}
  \tikzstyle{astate} = [circle, draw, text centered, font=\footnotesize, fill=blue!25]
  \tikzstyle{rstate} = [circle, draw, text centered, font=\footnotesize, fill=red!25]

  \begin{tikzpicture}[->,>=stealth', shorten >=1pt, auto, node distance=2.8cm, semithick]
    \node [astate] (1) at (0,0) {1};
    \node [astate] (2) at (1,0) {2};
    \node [rstate] (3) at (2,0) {3};
    \path (1) edge [bend left] node {b} (2)
          (2) edge node {b} (3)
          (2) edge [bend left] node {a} (1)
          (3) edge [loop above] node {(a, b)} (3);
  \end{tikzpicture}
#+end_src

The :pdfwidth and :pdfheight header arguments can be used to control the size of the generated pdf image, and the :packages header argument can be used to temporarily add new packages to your org-export-latex-packages-alist.