[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":281},["ShallowReactive",2],{"project-45276501":3},{"id":4,"name":5,"line":6,"line_source":7,"title":8,"url":9,"domain":9,"maker":10,"posted_at":11,"year":12,"points":13,"comments":14,"rank_in_year":15,"shown_in_year":16,"top":17,"tier":18,"category":19,"subcategory":20,"format":21,"keywords":22,"reception":27,"sentiment":28,"stance_mix":29,"scored_comments":34,"aspects":35,"strip":42,"post_text":44,"what":45,"said":76,"maker_in_thread":202,"shape":207,"grid":211,"attempts":245,"same_week":246,"maker_shows":30,"maker_hidden":273,"reader_version":274,"card":275},"45276501","Math2Tex","Convert handwritten math and complex notes to LaTeX text","title","Show HN: Math2Tex – Convert handwritten math and complex notes to LaTeX text",null,"leoyixing",1758120378,2025,79,16,898,3837,24,"notable","ai","ocr for math notation","web_app",[23,24,25,26],"handwritten math to latex","math ocr","latex converter","formula recognition","curious",-0.16,{"positive":30,"neutral":31,"mixed":32,"critical":33},1,7,0,3,11,{"idea":36,"design":37,"docs":38,"performance":39,"privacy":41},{"positive":30,"critical":32},{"positive":32,"critical":32},{"positive":32,"critical":32},{"positive":32,"critical":40},2,{"positive":32,"critical":30},[32,33,33,32,33,32,32,33,33,32,30,30,30,43,33,33],5,"Hi HN,\n\nI’m the creator of Math2Tex. I was a PhD student, I spend a huge amount of my time working with LaTeX, especially when dealing with lecture notes, academic papers, and homework. I built *Math2Tex*, a lightweight tool that converts handwritten or printed academic content — especially math formulas — into LaTeX or text\n\nThe Problem:\n\nI've always found it incredibly tedious to manually type out mathematical formulas, especially complex, multi-line equations from my handwritten notes or from a textbook. It's slow, boring, and I always make syntax errors. I tried some existing tools, but th",{"problem":46,"audience":52,"pricing":56,"motivation":60,"time_to_build":9,"stack":64,"openness":73,"stage":74,"team_size":75},{"value":47,"source":48,"evidence":49},"Manually typing handwritten or printed math formulas into LaTeX is tedious and error-prone","maker",[50],{"id":51},"post",{"value":53,"source":48,"evidence":54},"Students, researchers and anyone who writes LaTeX",[55],{"id":51},{"value":57,"source":48,"evidence":58},"Free to use",[59],{"id":51},{"value":61,"source":48,"evidence":62},"The maker, a PhD student, was tired of manually typing formulas from notes and textbooks",[63],{"id":51},[65,69],{"value":66,"source":48,"evidence":67},"Custom transformer-based OCR model fine-tuned on academic content",[68],{"id":51},{"value":70,"source":48,"evidence":71},"Deployed on Vercel",[72],{"id":51},"free","beta","unknown",{"praise":77,"objections":86,"requests":127,"questions":152,"alternatives":168},[78],{"value":79,"source":80,"evidence":81},"Welcomed as a useful tool for the LaTeX community","commenter",[82],{"id":83,"by":84,"text":85},"45314846","lorenzohess","This is great! The LaTeX community will grow much more thanks to user friendly tools.",[87,98,105,120],{"value":88,"source":80,"evidence":89},"Sign-in is required, which some users won't do",[90,94],{"id":91,"by":92,"text":93},"45315113","raphar","I won't log in to a site i don't know or trust",{"id":95,"by":96,"text":97},"45278214","gus_massa","Is it possible to ad a whiteboard to draw simple formulas? It requires a Google account. Is it possible to show a precalculated result for the examples? (I like the examples! But…",{"value":99,"source":80,"evidence":100},"Failed to convert a photo of Chinese handwritten physics notes",[101],{"id":102,"by":103,"text":104},"45321847","jasonni","I uploaded a picture of handwritten note. Why doesn't it return latex code? Below is the output(source code part) of your website: 二. 毕萨伐尔定律: B=∫dB = ∫(μ₀I dl × eᵣ)\u002F(4πr²) 1.…",{"value":106,"source":80,"evidence":107},"Model and code are closed; commenters want open weights",[108,112,116],{"id":109,"by":110,"text":111},"45315305","wittjeff","I'm always happy to see more innovation in this area. It'd be great if you could make your model, weights, and training corpus public (preferably under a permissive license) on…",{"id":113,"by":114,"text":115},"45315578","MayeulC","I agree that it would be nice if the model was open weights and could run locally. I have digitized almost all of my college handwritten notes, I would love to transcribe them,…",{"id":117,"by":118,"text":119},"45316152","projectile_","is the source open?",{"value":121,"source":80,"evidence":122},"Post text appears LLM-generated",[123],{"id":124,"by":125,"text":126},"45315144","mostlyk","Any reason for using a transformer architecture? You look at https:\u002F\u002Folmocr.allenai.org\u002F which does the best handwritten-to-latex in my opinion also does use VLM. Also maybe xD…",[128,134,138,145],{"value":129,"source":80,"evidence":130},"Open-source the model, weights and training corpus",[131,132,133],{"id":109,"by":110,"text":111},{"id":113,"by":114,"text":115},{"id":117,"by":118,"text":119},{"value":135,"source":80,"evidence":136},"Add a whiteboard for drawing formulas",[137],{"id":95,"by":96,"text":97},{"value":139,"source":80,"evidence":140},"Show precomputed example outputs without login",[141,142],{"id":95,"by":96,"text":97},{"id":143,"by":96,"text":144},"45288052","I was proposing some samples where the result is calculated by you beforehand, so it's possible to see the result without login in. (Pinky promise that you are not cheating and…",{"value":146,"source":80,"evidence":147},"Provide an API",[148],{"id":149,"by":150,"text":151},"45341836","acosmism","Do you have an api?",[153,160,164],{"value":154,"source":80,"evidence":155},"Where did the large handwritten math dataset come from?",[156],{"id":157,"by":158,"text":159},"45317049","mkl","Where did you get a large dataset of handwritten maths? I have been looking for such a thing, and I have a lot of my own, but that's just one person's handwriting. I have had a…",{"value":161,"source":80,"evidence":162},"Why use a transformer architecture rather than other VLM approaches?",[163],{"id":124,"by":125,"text":126},{"value":165,"source":80,"evidence":166},"Will benchmarks be run against Mathpix and other tools?",[167],{"id":109,"by":110,"text":111},[169,176,180,187,194,198],{"value":170,"source":80,"evidence":171},"Mathpix (paid)",[172],{"id":173,"by":174,"text":175},"45315094","krackers","Thank you! The other popular tools I'm aware of in this space is MathPix [1] (paid) and Latex-OCR [2] (oss) [1] https:\u002F\u002Fmathpix.com\u002Fimage-to-latex [2]…",{"value":177,"source":80,"evidence":178},"LaTeX-OCR (open source)",[179],{"id":173,"by":174,"text":175},{"value":181,"source":80,"evidence":182},"inftyeditor and ffes",[183],{"id":184,"by":185,"text":186},"45315437","WillAdams","There were already a couple of tools in this space for folks to contrast\u002Fcompare: inftyeditor: https:\u002F\u002Fwww.inftyproject.org\u002Fen\u002Fsoftware.html ffes:…",{"value":188,"source":80,"evidence":189},"Detexify",[190],{"id":191,"by":192,"text":193},"45315791","DroneBetter","detexify (https:\u002F\u002Fdetexify.kirelabs.org\u002Fclassify.html) also does drawn character identification and is a webpage.",{"value":195,"source":80,"evidence":196},"Qwen2.5-VL via Ollama",[197],{"id":157,"by":158,"text":159},{"value":199,"source":80,"evidence":200},"olmOCR",[201],{"id":124,"by":125,"text":126},{"comments":30,"answered":30,"key":203},[204],{"id":205,"text":206},"45284298","Thank you for your suggestion. The whiteboard drawing has been recorded in the to-do list. Additionally, you can click on the examples to try. These require logging.",{"commenters":208,"max_depth":33,"maker_replies":30,"first_comment_mins":209,"lifespan_hours":210},15,117,131,[212,214,216,218,220,222,223,224,226,227,231,233,235,237,240,243],[173,32,32,213,174,32],"other\u002Fneutral\u002Fnone",[157,30,33,215,158,32],"project\u002Fneutral\u002Fidea",[95,40,33,217,96,32],"project\u002Fneutral\u002Fdesign",[205,40,32,219,10,30],"maker\u002Fneutral\u002Fnone",[143,40,33,221,96,32],"maker\u002Fneutral\u002Fdocs",[184,33,32,213,185,32],[191,33,32,213,192,32],[109,225,33,215,110,32],4,[113,225,33,215,114,32],[228,225,32,229,230,32],"45318357","commenter\u002Fneutral\u002Fnone","kragen",[102,43,30,232,103,32],"project\u002Fcritical\u002Fperformance",[124,234,30,232,125,32],6,[91,31,30,236,92,32],"project\u002Fcritical\u002Fprivacy",[83,238,43,239,84,32],8,"project\u002Fpositive\u002Fidea",[149,241,33,242,150,32],9,"project\u002Fneutral\u002Fnone",[117,244,33,242,118,32],10,[],[247,252,256,260,264,268],{"id":248,"name":249,"points":250,"category":251},"45231378","AnyCrap",1184,"creative",{"id":253,"name":254,"points":255,"category":251},"45220069","Beat Maker",202,{"id":257,"name":258,"points":259,"category":19},"45212535","Asxiv.org",161,{"id":261,"name":262,"points":263,"category":251},"45232299","CLAVIER-36",146,{"id":265,"name":266,"points":267,"category":251},"45247396","Backdrop",82,{"id":269,"name":270,"points":271,"category":272},"45245138","Dagger.js",80,"languages",false,"v2",{"id":276,"name":5,"line":6,"ai":273,"cat":19,"year":12,"points":13,"comments":14,"rec":27,"s":28,"top":17,"kw":277,"maker":10,"domain":278,"tier":18,"attempts":32,"strip":279,"url":-1,"mix":280,"praise":79,"objection":88,"sub":20},45276501,[23,24,25,26],"","0330300330111533",[30,31,32,33],1794036682677]