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Josef Albers
Josef Albers

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thumb: popup images and render LaTeX directly in Vim

#opensource #plugin #python #showdev

I made a small Vim 9.2+ plugin called thumb.

  • Put the cursor on an image path → :Thumb → popup the image.
  • Select LaTeX in Visual mode → :Thumb → render it as an image popup.

For example:

![diagram](images/diagram.png)
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Put the cursor on diagram.png and run:

:Thumb
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Or select:

\frac{a}{b} = \sqrt{x^2 + y^2}
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and run:

:Thumb
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It uses Vim's native popup image support, with Python/Pillow for image conversion and matplotlib for LaTeX rendering.

No mappings are installed, so you can add your own:

nnoremap <leader>t <Cmd>Thumb<CR>
xnoremap <leader>t <Cmd>Thumb<CR>
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GitHub: https://github.com/JosefAlbers/thumb

Requires Vim 9.2+, Python 3, Pillow, and matplotlib.

Feedback welcome, particularly around the popup positioning/rendering.

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