Getting emacs to convert latex on the fly?

Question

What's really nice about posting in the math stackexchange, and other forums, is that you can view the latex symbols right below as you're typing your post. Is there a way to do this in emacs? That is, can I type "$\in$" and have it immediately convert the code to the "element of" symbol (in the position where I typed it)?

Answer 1

AucTEX includes preview-latex-mode, which almost does what you want. (I don't think it autoconverts by default, but I'm confident you could configure it to do so.)

Answer 2

you can preview-latex-mode use only in syntatic correct LaTeX files.

however there are two other solutions 1. org-preview-latex-fragment: which works with the same idea (subs latex by png) but you can do it in ANY buffer, email etc.

1. you can also use x-symbol which uses fonts to display $\int$ as an integral. Again it works in ANY buffer. I am not sure that x-symbol still works with recent GNU emacs 24 but I do know it works for Xemacs.