Tablizer

Convert LaTeX to Protobuf Schema Online

Paste a LaTeX table below, edit it if you need to, and get Protobuf Schema back. The conversion runs in your browser, so nothing is uploaded, there is no size limit and there is no signup.

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The output will appear here once there is a table to convert.

What LaTeX is

A LaTeX table is a tabular environment: a column specification, ampersands between cells and double backslashes at the end of each row.

Academic papers, theses and anything typeset with LaTeX or written in Overleaf.

What Protobuf Schema is

A proto3 message definition with numbered fields.

gRPC services and anything using Protocol Buffers.

What changes when you convert LaTeX to Protobuf Schema

The tabular body is read, rules are dropped, and escaped characters are unescaped. Text wrapped in textbf or emph is reduced to the text itself.

Field numbers are assigned in column order starting at one. Types are inferred from the values.

What carries over from LaTeX to Protobuf Schema

LaTeX records 2 things about a table that Protocol Buffers has no way to hold.

Protocol Buffers wants a type for each column, and LaTeX does not record one, so each column is typed from what its values look like. A column of digits that should stay text - a zip code, a phone number, a leading-zero id - is the usual thing to check afterwards.

Protocol Buffers has no header row. The column names are repeated as keys on every record instead, which is why the result is bigger on disk than the table it came from.

Anything visual in the LaTeX - weight, alignment, colour, column widths - has no counterpart in Protocol Buffers and is dropped. The values are what survives.

The result can be read a record at a time, and appended to by adding to the end of it. That is worth having for a table too large to hold in memory, and it means a Protocol Buffers file that is cut off part way through still gives you every record before the cut.

This is the direction that recovers structure: LaTeX has no table in it to read, only an arrangement that looks like one, so the rows and columns are inferred rather than read.

A worked example

Three rows of staff data, with an identifier that has a leading zero, a value containing a comma, a value containing quotes and one blank cell. Those are the four places formats disagree, so they are the four places to look.

LaTeX in
\begin{tabular}{lllll}
  \toprule
  id & name & role & started & hours \\
  \midrule
  007 & Halima Yusuf & Analyst, data & 2024-03-15 & 38.5 \\
  012 & Jonah "Jo" Pryce & Engineer & 2025-11-02 &  \\
  104 & Wei Chen & Manager & 2023-06-30 & 40 \\
  \bottomrule
\end{tabular}
Protobuf Schema out
syntax = "proto3";

message staff {
  int64 id = 1;
  string name = 2;
  string role = 3;
  string started = 4;
  double hours = 5;
}

Questions

How do I convert LaTeX to Protobuf Schema?

Paste your LaTeX into the box above or drop the file onto it. Check the table in the grid, then copy or download the Protobuf Schema from the output panel. It takes one step and the data never leaves your browser.

Why does my table not compile?

The usual cause is a missing package. Booktabs rules need \usepackage{booktabs} in the preamble. Switch the rules option off and the output uses plain \hline instead, which needs nothing.

Is there a limit on file size?

No. The work happens on your own machine, so the limit is your machine's memory rather than an upload cap. A file with tens of thousands of rows converts in a second or two.

Is my data uploaded anywhere?

No. The parsing and generating are done by JavaScript running on this page. You can watch the network tab while you convert and see that nothing is sent.

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