Syntax trees to SVGs

May 01, 2026

I hate LaTeX. Problem is, the forest package is still the only way to make presentable syntax trees. So here’s a way to convert LaTeX trees into individual .svg files that can be inserted into your documents without getting all pixelated.

Prerequisites: I have TeXLive installed on Windows, which comes with the dvisvgm command-line utility. The latex command generates .dvi files that dvisvgm converts to svg. If you can open up a fresh terminal and run dvisvgm, you’re probably good.

Usage: python tree-generator.py FILENAME.tex. The script will hunt for anything between \begin{forest} and \end{forest} or \begin{adjustbox} and \end{adjustbox} (if you’re cropping as I describe in my post about syntax tree tricks). It will turn the trees it finds into individual .svg files. These .svg files can be inserted into Microsoft Word and LibreOffice Writer but not Google Docs (grrr).

If you’re using the one, two, and main layers as I describe in my post about syntax tree tricks, this script accounts for that too.

Script:

import sys
import re
import subprocess
import os

with open(sys.argv[1], 'r') as file:
    content = file.read()

content = content.replace('\t', '').replace('\n', '')

forest = list(re.finditer(r'\\begin\{forest\}.*?\\end\{forest\}', content))
adjustbox = list(re.finditer(r'\\begin\{adjustbox\}.*?\\end\{adjustbox\}', content))

trees = sorted(
    forest + adjustbox,
    key = lambda x: x.start()
)
trees = [tree.group() for tree in trees]

i = 0
while i < len(trees) - 1:
    if "adjustbox" in trees[i]:
        del trees[i + 1]
    i += 1

for index, tree in enumerate(trees):
    latex = "\\documentclass[12pt]{standalone}\\usepackage[linguistics]{forest}\\usepackage{times}\\usepackage{amsmath}\\usepackage{adjustbox}\\begin{document}\\pgfdeclarelayer{one}\\pgfdeclarelayer{two}\\pgfsetlayers{one,two,main}" + tree + "\\end{document}"
    
    with open("temp-latex.tex", "w", encoding='utf-8') as f:
        f.write(latex)
    
    print('converting tree ' + str(index) + ' into dvi...')
    subprocess.run(['latex', 'temp-latex.tex'])
    
    print('converting tree ' + str(index) + ' into svg...')
    subprocess.run(['dvisvgm', '-n', 'temp-latex.dvi'])
    
    print('cleaning up...')
    os.rename('temp-latex.svg', 'tree-' + str(index) + '.svg')
    os.remove('temp-latex.tex')
    os.remove('temp-latex.aux')
    os.remove('temp-latex.dvi')
    os.remove('temp-latex.log')