Reitz LaTeX

Write like iA Writer. Read like a LaTeX paper.

An Obsidian theme for people who believe the medium is the message.

v1.3.2 · light & dark · fonts embedded · works offline · MIT

Write: the iA Writer-style workshop

Read: the same note, typeset like a paper

Your notes are drafts while you write them. When you read them back, they should look like they matter.

Reitz LaTeX gives Obsidian two modes of mind. Editing is a quiet, monospaced room in the spirit of iA Writer, where you're alone with the words. Reading turns the same note into a typeset academic paper: Latin Modern, justified and hyphenated text, real heading hierarchy, booktabs tables and figures, all set the way TeX would set them.

The thinking behind it

The medium is the message

McLuhan was right. How a thing looks isn't decoration on top of the content. It changes what the content is. The same paragraph reads as a scribble in one typeface and as an argument in another. Set your thinking like a scratchpad and you'll treat it like one. Set it like a paper and you'll start writing papers.

So this theme takes a deliberate position: aesthetics come first. The look is the point, not a finish applied at the end.

Writing and reading are different acts

Editing, inspired by iA Writer. The source editor is set entirely in IBM Plex Mono, with headings, bold and italic all in one honest monospace. There's a centered 760px measure, a warm active-line glow, a breathing cursor, faint indent guides and a soft spotlight vignette behind the text. Markdown stays visible and plain. Nothing is justified or hyphenated, so the text never shifts under your cursor. It's a workshop.

Reading, inspired by the LaTeX article. Reading view becomes the finished document. The body is set in Latin Modern Roman at a LaTeX-faithful scale. The title is centered like \maketitle in its own optical face, and section headings follow LaTeX's measured size ratios. Paragraphs are justified and hyphenated. The measure, about 41rem, is tuned to the \textwidth of a LaTeX article on US Letter.

Going from one to the other should feel like a change of state: from draft to document.

Information architecture is the real feature

Typography is how structure becomes visible. A good page tells you, before you read a word, what's a title, a section, an aside, a citation or a figure. Reitz LaTeX treats every Obsidian element as part of a document hierarchy, the way a paper would: callouts become theorem environments, embeds become quotations, footnotes drop below a rule, and Dataview results become tables in the body. Each element gets one clear typographic role, so the shape of your thinking is legible at a glance.

Typefaces

All embedded as WOFF2, so there are no network calls and nothing to install.

Inline and display math are already rendered by MathJax in Computer Modern, so they match the body with no extra work.

Built-in features

Typography

• The body uses LaTeX's 10pt/12pt leading ratio, adapted for screens.
• Rendered paragraphs are justified and auto-hyphenated, while headings, tables, code and callouts never stretch.
• Microtypography approximates the microtype package.
• Paragraphs are separated by space with no first-line indent, in the parskip style.
• Bold and italic use the serif's own true faces.
• Table figures use lining tabular numerals, so numeric columns line up.
• The inline filename title is hidden, so your H1 is the title.

Document structure

• Callouts: amsthm-style, with a hairline box and a small-caps run-in label. Foldable callouts keep a quiet triangle.
• Footnotes: a short left-aligned hairline like \footnoterule, set in the 7pt optical face.
• Blockquotes: justified and indented like a quotation environment.
• Embeds and transclusions: a quiet quotation, not a boxed widget.
• Lists: LaTeX itemize/enumerate spacing, with a tight column and hanging markers.
• Task lists: a plain hairline square, filled when done.
• Figures: images and SVGs centered like \begin{figure}\centering, with tiny inline icons left in the line.
• Tables: in the booktabs style, centered at the measure. Wide tables scroll instead of clipping, and internal links in cells never break.
• Display math: centered, with LaTeX's own vertical spacing.

Code

• Monochrome syntax highlighting in the listings style: bold ink keywords, faint italic comments and muted strings.
• Literal verbatim with ligatures off, so -> and >= never fuse.
• The copy-code button is quieted so it doesn't compete with the content.

Diagrams

• Mermaid as TikZ: paper-filled nodes, ink hairlines, serif labels and visible arrowheads, in both modes and across Obsidian's changing renderers.
• Canvas: square cards in the body serif, as a nod to TikZ.

The rest of Obsidian, made printerly

• Links get a printerly treatment, with external-link icons quieted.
• Tags render as typewriter text, not pills.
• ==Highlights== and text selection share one warm yellow wash.
• Hover previews look like a slip of paper, with square corners and a hairline ink border.
• Dataview results are treated as content and match the article.
• Collapsible properties sit quietly as a "+" at rest and flip to "−" on hover.

Print and PDF export

• Exports look like a real paper, which is the whole point of looking like LaTeX.
• External URLs appear after their link text, the way they do in print.

Modes

• Light: ink on paper.
• Dark: the same Latin Modern on dark paper, with diagrams and edges kept at full contrast.
• Live Preview headings follow the reading-view scale but stay left-aligned, so the cursor never jumps.

Installation

From Obsidian (once listed in Community Themes)

1. Open Settings → Appearance → Themes → Manage.
2. Search for Reitz LaTeX and click Install and use.

Manually

1. Download theme.css and manifest.json from the latest release.
2. Create the folder <your vault>/.obsidian/themes/Reitz LaTeX/ and put both files in it.
3. In Obsidian, open Settings → Appearance → Themes and pick Reitz LaTeX.

From source

git clone https://github.com/kennethreitz/obsidian-reitz-latex.git \
  "<your vault>/.obsidian/themes/Reitz LaTeX"

Then pick it in Settings → Appearance → Themes. Run git pull to update.

Tip: for the full effect, write in Source mode and read in Reading view. You can toggle between them with ⌘E / Ctrl+E.

Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md.

License

The theme CSS is MIT-licensed, © Kenneth Reitz. The bundled fonts are Latin Modern (GUST Font License) and IBM Plex Mono (SIL Open Font License 1.1).