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javalatexpdf-generationfreemarker

Freemarker custom characters escaping (escaping LaTeX special characters)

What is the best way to escape special latex characters when using freemarker to create a .tex file?

Currently, I am passing a java function for escaping symbols and I have to wrap every variable into this function call. I know that freemarker has built-in escaping for some formats, but sadly latex is not supported.

This is how I do it at the moment:

${escapeFormatter.escapeSymbols(some.value)!}

I don't like it that I have to manually call this function for every value. How can I make it more generic?

Solution

  • You can register your own "output format" via freemarker.template.Configuration#setRegisteredCustomOutputFormats. Then those can be used with the auto-escaping feature, just like the standard ones (see: https://freemarker.apache.org/docs/dgui_misc_autoescaping.html). See also OutputFormat and MarkupOutputFormat API documentation, and implementations in the source code as an example.