I can use LaTeX with the TeXstudio app as flatpak, and I can use inkscape with the Inkscape app. However, inside the inkscape app I cannot use LaTeX to render beautiful math into my svg drawings. Klicking on Extensions → Render → Mathematics only shows a greyed out and unclickable LaTeX (pdflatex).
How can I use LaTeX from within the inkscape app? This is important for me when I want to change to Fedora silverblue, where apps are supposed to be used as flatpaks.
P.S. Everything works fine if I install LaTeX and inkscape via dnf, but I am interested in the flatpak/silverblue way of things.
This is a Flatpak feature: apps are sandboxed and cannot speak to each other. The simplest solution would be to use a Flatpak build of Inkscape that includes the required LaTeX bits—perhaps worth filing a request on wherever you are getting your Flatpak from (Flathub?).
I don’t know enough about Flatpak, but there may be some advanced configurations that allow two Flatpaks to communicate with each other. Someone else here may know.
This is a Flatpak feature: apps are sandboxed and cannot speak to each other.
I am aware of this feature, I was just wondering the there could be a “companion” app which can be loaded by others if needed?
Yes, I did file some bug reports about this on flathub, but I am wondering if bundling a LaTeX environment would mean that I need to download the tex environment for every app that uses it? Would that mean that I end up with 3 (or more) identical tex environments on my computer? Or, probably even worse, have 3 times a tex environment in different versions?
It depends on how TeXLive is included in the Flatpak eco-system. It could be included as a common “runtime” and different apps could use it, or it could be bundled with each Flatpak.
Flatpaks are generally designed to bundle everything they need. This is what makes them portable. This is unlike the rpms from the repos where we package each software independently and try to not bundle anything unless absolutely necessary. So if you install different TeX editors from the repos, you’ll still only have one copy of TeXLive.
OK, that’s good to hear. But it might still mean that I request to bloat everyones apps if they for example are not interested in using LaTeX with inkscape… I wish there was some solution to only optionally include some stuff into flatpak apps.