Render Latex symbols in Plotly graphs in VSCode Interactive Window

Question

I am trying to get Latex symbols in titles and labels of a Plotly figure. I am using VSCode and I run the code in Interactive Window. Latex usage looks really simple in Jupyter Notebook, from what I saw in other posts, but I can't get it to work within this environment.

My env:

python 3.10.4

plotly 5.9.0

vscode 1.62.3

What I tried:

• use r"$$" formatting,
• change the font family
• change plotly.io.renderers.default
• install mathjax in my conda env and try to adapt plotly.offline mode (see https://github.com/plotly/plotly.py/issues/515)

This basic code snippet should work according to most posts I have seen but does not do the Latexrendering in the Interactive Window. It has been taken from https://plotly.com/python/LaTeX/, where everything looks so easy. That's why I am guessing the issue is related to VSCode.

import plotly.graph_objs as go

fig = go.Figure()
fig.add_trace(go.Scatter(
    x=[1, 2, 3, 4],
    y=[1, 4, 9, 16],
    name=r'$\alpha_{1c} = 352 \pm 11 \text{ km s}^{-1}$'
))
fig.add_trace(go.Scatter(
    x=[1, 2, 3, 4],
    y=[0.5, 2, 4.5, 8],
    name=r'$\beta_{1c} = 25 \pm 11 \text{ km s}^{-1}$'
))
fig.update_layout(
    xaxis_title=r'$\sqrt{(n_\text{c}(t|{T_\text{early}}))}$',
    yaxis_title=r'$d, r \text{ (solar radius)}$'
)
fig.show()

What I have

What I should have

Answer 1

This is a known issue with Plotly in Jupyter notebooks in VSCode (e.g. issues #7801 and #8131).

Tomas Mazak shared a workaround in #8131:

import plotly
import plotly.graph_objs as go
from IPython.display import display, HTML

## Tomas Mazak's workaround
plotly.offline.init_notebook_mode()
display(HTML(
    '<script type="text/javascript" async src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/mathjax/2.7.1/MathJax.js?config=TeX-MML-AM_SVG"></script>'
))
##

fig = go.Figure()
fig.add_trace(go.Scatter(
    x=[1, 2, 3, 4],
    y=[1, 4, 9, 16],
    name=r'$\alpha_{1c} = 352 \pm 11 \text{ km s}^{-1}$'
))
fig.add_trace(go.Scatter(
    x=[1, 2, 3, 4],
    y=[0.5, 2, 4.5, 8],
    name=r'$\beta_{1c} = 25 \pm 11 \text{ km s}^{-1}$'
))
fig.update_layout(
    xaxis_title=r'$\sqrt{(n_\text{c}(t|{T_\text{early}}))}$',
    yaxis_title=r'$d, r \text{ (solar radius)}$'
)
fig.show()

Output: