specTeX

A package for producing publication-quality acoustic figures (waveforms, spectrograms, and TextGrid annotations) in LaTeX, using data exported from Praat.

Overview

specTeX works in two steps:

1. Praat exports a waveform image, a spectrogram image, and a TeX data file containing TikZ drawing commands (axes, labels, TextGrid interval boundaries).
2. LaTeX includes the data file inside a tikzpicture environment, producing a complete figure with aligned waveform, spectrogram, axis labels, and TextGrid tier annotations.

The result is a vector-quality figure suitable for journal submission, with IPA labels rendered by the Doulos SIL font.

Requirements

• Praat 6.x or later
• LaTeX engine: XeLaTeX or LuaLaTeX (required by fontspec)
• IPA font: Doulos SIL (recommended; the package falls back to the default font with a warning if Doulos SIL is not installed)
• LaTeX packages: graphicx, tikz, calc, fontspec (loaded automatically by specTeX.sty)

Repository structure

specTeX.praat           Praat script — run from an editor window to export figure data
specTeX.sty             LaTeX style file — provides \specfigure and figure layout
LICENSE                 GPL v3
examples/
  make_demo.praat       Synthesizes "praat" and generates demo figure data (no GUI needed)
  demo_document.tex     LaTeX wrapper for the demo figure
  example_output.tex    Sample specTeX output (from the original 2013 version)
  example_document.tex  LaTeX wrapper for the sample output
  Makefile              Build targets for demo and example PDFs

Installation

1. Place specTeX.sty where your LaTeX distribution can find it — either in your project directory or in your local texmf tree (e.g., ~/texmf/tex/latex/specTeX/).
2. Place specTeX.praat where you can open it from Praat's script editor, or add it to the Praat menu via Praat > New Praat script.

Usage

Step 1: Export from Praat

1. Open a Sound and its TextGrid together in a Praat editor window.
2. Select the time range you want to display.
3. Run specTeX.praat from the editor's script menu.
4. Choose an output filename (e.g., myfigure.tex).
5. In the dialog, configure:
   • Tiers: which TextGrid tiers to include (enter tier numbers concatenated, e.g., 12 for tiers 1 and 2; 0 for none)
   • Image width: figure width in inches (default: 6)
   • Image height: panel height in inches (default: 1.5)

The script generates three files alongside your chosen output path:

File	Contents
myfigure.tex	TikZ drawing commands (axes, labels, tier annotations)
myfigure_wf.pdf	Waveform image
myfigure_spec.pdf	Spectrogram image

Step 2: Include in LaTeX

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{specTeX}

\begin{document}

\begin{figure}[ht]
\centering
\begin{tikzpicture}
\specfigure{myfigure.tex}
\end{tikzpicture}
\caption{My acoustic figure.}
\end{figure}

\end{document}

Compile with xelatex or lualatex.

Configurable lengths

Override these in your document preamble with \setlength as needed:

Length	Default	Description
\imagewidth	\textwidth - 3em	Width of waveform/spectrogram images
\imageheight	4cm	Height of each image panel
\labheight	1.5em	Height reserved for axis labels
\intheight	1.5em	Height of each TextGrid tier row
\inttextboxsep	1pt	Padding around interval label text
\dashing	2pt	Line width base for interval boundaries

Other options

• \dashintoimage: Set to 1 (default) to extend interval boundary lines down into the waveform, or 0 to keep them above.
• \ipa{text}: Renders text in Doulos SIL. Falls back to the default font if Doulos SIL is not installed.

Demo

The examples/ directory includes a self-contained demo that synthesizes the word "praat" using Praat's built-in speech synthesizer (no audio files needed):

cd examples
make demo

This runs two steps:

1. praat --run make_demo.praat — synthesizes "praat", extracts the phoneme and word TextGrid tiers, exports waveform and spectrogram PDFs, and generates demo.tex
2. xelatex demo_document.tex — compiles the final PDF with waveform, spectrogram, time/frequency/pressure axes, and two annotation tiers (phones: p, ɹ, ɑː, t; word: praat)

Other Makefile targets:

Target	Description
make demo	Build the demo PDF (default)
make example	Build the example PDF (uses placeholder images)
make clean	Remove LaTeX auxiliary files
make distclean	Remove all generated files (PDFs, images, .tex data)

License

GPL v3. See LICENSE.