website/content/blog/sphinxmathjax.md

title	date	draft	tags	medium_enabled
Sphinx & MathJax	2020-03-20T18:59:40-04:00	false	Documentation Python LaTex	true

To include mathematical notation in Python docs generated by Sphinx, it should look like the following:

class Line:
    r"""
    Holds the equation for a line.
    
    :math:`y = mx + \frac{b}{1}`
    
    In this equation, :math:`m` is the slope and :math:`b` is the y-intercept.
    """
    pass

The content after :math: and inside the backticks is treated as inline math. The r in front of the triple quotes is used to make it a raw string and so that LaTex commands such as \frac{}{} operate as intended. There also cannot be a space between :math: and the backtick.

The Sphinx configuration needs to have the mathjax extension loaded as well.

extensions = [
    # ....
    "sphinx.ext.mathjax",
    # ....
]