Convert HTML and inline Mathjax math to LaTeX with pandoc ruby

Question

I'm building a Rails app and I'm looking for a way to convert database entries with html and inline MathJax math (TeX) to LaTeX for pdf creation.

I found similar questions like mine:

• Convert html mathjax to markdown with pandoc
• How to convert HTML with mathjax into latex using pandoc?

and I see two options here:

1. Create a Haskell executable which leaves stuff like \(y=f(x)\) alone when converting html to LaTeX
2. Write a ruby method which does the following things:
   • Take the string and split it into an array with a regex (string.split(regex))
   • loop through the created array and if content matches regex convert the parts to LaTeX which do not include inline math with PandocRuby.html(string).to_latex
   • concatenate everything back together (array.join)

I would prefer the ruby method solution because I'm hosting my application on Heroku and I don't like to checkin binaries into git.
Note: the pandoc binary is implemented this way http://www.petekeen.net/introduction-to-heroku-buildpacks)

So my question is: what should the regex look like to split the string by \(math\).

E.g. string can look like this: text \(y=f(x) \iff \log_{10}(b)\) and \(a+b=c\) text

And for the sake of completeness, how should the Haskell script be written to leave \(math\) alone when converting to LaTeX and the ruby method is not a possible solution?

Answer 1

Get the very latest version of pandoc (1.12.2). Then you can do

pandoc -f html+tex_math_dollars+tex_math_single_backslash -t latex