Mathapedia LaTeX + PSTricks Docker Image

docker pull mathapedia/latex:latest

A batteries-included TeX Live image for papers that use PSTricks (which needs the latex -> dvips -> ps2pdf route) as well as TikZ/pgfplots, BibTeX/ Biber, IEEEtran, and the tooling the Mathapedia boilerplates rely on.

Previously published as pyramation/pstricks-latex; that name still works but new tags land on mathapedia/latex.

What's inside

Base	Ubuntu 22.04, TeX Live 2021 (Debian packages)
Engines	latex, pdflatex, xelatex, dvips, dvisvgm, Ghostscript (ps2pdf)
Packages	texlive-pstricks, -pictures (TikZ/pgfplots), -latex-extra, -science, -publishers (IEEEtran), -bibtex-extra, -formats-extra, -lang-all
Build tooling	latexmk, bibtex, biber, chktex, latexindent, latexdiff, rtf2latex2e
Extras	Node.js, make, git, python3

Using it

Mount your tex/ directory at /usr/src (the working directory):

# PSTricks documents: latex -> dvips -> ps2pdf, with bibtex reruns handled by latexmk
docker run --rm -v "$PWD/tex:/usr/src" mathapedia/latex \
  latexmk -pdfps -interaction=nonstopmode -halt-on-error paper.tex

# Plain documents (no PSTricks)
docker run --rm -v "$PWD/tex:/usr/src" mathapedia/latex \
  latexmk -pdf -interaction=nonstopmode -halt-on-error paper.tex

# Interactive shell
docker run --rm -it -v "$PWD/tex:/usr/src" mathapedia/latex bash

For a complete authoring project (Makefile with build/watch/preview/ lint/svg, CI, VS Code config) scaffold one with pgpm:

pgpm init workspace --repo Mathapedia/boilerplates

Repo Makefile

Target	What it does
make build	Build the image locally as mathapedia/latex:latest
make check	Smoke-test that every tool/package the boilerplate needs is present
make pstricks	Compile tex/test.tex via the PSTricks route
make ssh	Interactive shell with tex/ mounted
make buildx	Multi-arch (amd64 + arm64) build and push
make push-legacy	Also push under the old pyramation/pstricks-latex name

Override the image used by the run targets with RUN_IMAGE=....

Publishing

.github/workflows/build-docker.yml builds the image on every push and PR, runs make check and compiles the test document, then (not on PRs) pushes multi-arch (amd64 + arm64) images to Docker Hub as mathapedia/latex (via the DOCKER_USERNAME/DOCKER_TOKEN org secrets):

• main -> :latest and :sha-<short>
• tag vX.Y.Z -> :X.Y.Z and :X.Y

PSTricks notes

PSTricks emits raw PostScript, so pdflatex cannot render it. Use the DVI route (latexmk -pdfps, or latex && dvips && ps2pdf). If you see "unknown token" or PostScript errors:

• make sure you're going through dvips, not pdflatex;
• pass -dALLOWPSTRANSPARENCY to ps2pdf when mixing TikZ opacity with PSTricks;
• load geometry/hyperref with the dvips option.

Notes

• From Word (.doc/.docx): export RTF from Google Docs, then rtf2latex2e file.rtf.
• Diffs: latexdiff old.tex new.tex > diff.tex and compile as usual.