LaTeX Editors/IDEs

Question

What editors/IDEs are available for easing the process of writing TeX/LaTeX documents?

Please state some useful features like code completion, spell checking, building final DVI or PDF files, etc.

This question is undergoing a systematic refurbishment, see Let’s polish the Editors/IDEs question on Meta. If you’d like to see another editor feature covered here or to take care of an editor that’s not covered yet, share your ideas in that meta question.

List of editors

Links to answers.

Adding structure view, native knitr/sweave support, and auto correct would be great for these comparisons. — kennyB, Nov 07 '14 at 00:13
@kennyB Not sure what you mean by 'structure view' (outliner, perhaps?). Knitr/sweave looks to me to be rather specialist plus I'm not quite clear on what would be required. Perhaps this is one to raise on meta, probably as a new thread linked to our older 'tidy up the IDE question' one. — Joseph Wright, Nov 25 '14 at 08:30
Outliner is probably what I mean, yes. This is a frame that contains sections, subsections, tables, figures for easy navigation in large documents. — kennyB, Feb 11 '15 at 23:02
Also here is a list of TeX editing softwares for Linuz. What is good LaTeX editor software on Linux? — akikara, Feb 21 '15 at 11:59
For more online editors, a list is kept at http://tex.stackexchange.com/a/1654/9075 — koppor, Sep 17 '15 at 00:49
Which of these have auto-sync feature? like overleaf
Also which have pdf-code sync? — Hao S, Oct 01 '19 at 02:34
Doesn't any TeX editor which shows the result document in (soft) real-time defeat one of the key advantages of (La)TeX? That the writer focuses on content, and that he specifies how the document should look like and let TeX find out how exactly that is. Since I started using Latex some 20 years ago I edit my documents in Vim. Never felt the need for something more sophisticated, let alone a live preview. Or am I missing something? — Johannes Linkels, Mar 11 '22 at 00:17

score 363 · Answer 1 · edited Jan 19 '24 at 18:29

363

Emacs with AUCTeX — emacs auctex

Platforms: Windows, Mac (incl. Aquamacs fork), Unix
License: Free software (GPL)
Languages: de, dk, fr, is, it, jp, nl, pl, se, sk are supported by AUCTeX language styles
Unicode: Yes, from Emacs 23, characters are represented using Unicode
RTL/bidirectional support: From Emacs 24, through bidi-mode
% !TeX directives: No, but has several realizations of file local variables
Syntax highlighting: Yes, customisable through customize and Elisp
Code completion: Yes
Code folding: Yes
Spell checking: Yes
SyncTeX: Yes
Built-in output viewer: Yes
Project management: org-mode, reftex-mode, speedbar

Emacs is one of the oldest programmable editors, which has basic support for TeX and friends. AUCTeX is a plugin to Emacs which provides a much more advanced support for editing LaTeX, ConTeXt, docTeX, Texinfo, and Plain TeX documents. It comes with a sophisticated auto-completion mechanism for environments and commands, supporting by default more than two hundreds LaTeX packages (but virtually any package can be automatically parsed in order to provide autocompletion for its commands and environments).

^{Emacs 30.0.50 running on Gnome 44, with a little cosmetic customization (no toolbar, flat and lighter mode line, current line highlighted). Notice the fringe indicators (curly arrows) around soft-wrapped lines (enabled by default) and the context aware spell checking, provided by Jinx}

RefTeX is another plugin to Emacs, independent from and complementary to AUCTeX, which aids you with the management of bibliographic sources. It makes all your references as easy to find as a C-c <key>, for both BibTeX and biblatex, and also provides convenient shortcuts for navigating between sections in your document, bound by default to C-c =:

Screenshot featuring RefTeX's outliner ^{Note that colour themes are completely customizable}

AUCTeX supports multi-file parsing, so that huge documents with \input or \include commands are easily compiled with C-c C-c from any of their files. No more going back to the master file in order to compile.

AUCTeX's preview-latex offers WYSIWYG previewing of formulae.

Interesting features of Emacs:

Customizable lax search: decide whether to match è when searching for e, or ’ when searching for ', etc..
Indirect buffers for viewing and editing one file at two different places.
follow-mode makes side-by-side windows behave like a single tall window.
Use table-insert along with table-generate-source and table-recognize-* functions to easily create a base for your tables.
Type M-x align-current to align &'s in tables.
Fold sections and navigate the outline structure of the document using Outline Mode.
Lots of useful keyboard shortcuts for writing LaTeX.
Operate on multiple files (e.g. chapters of a book) in group with filesets.
Emacs keeps a full undo history tree (which can be navigated using Vundo or undo-tree), and allows undoing changes within a specific region of text.
Other advanced/IDE features: regular expression search and replace; registers for saving text, positions and more; a large selection of extension packages available (mainly on GNU ELPA and MELPA).
Extensively documented, both within Emacs, via the Emacs and AUCTeX Texinfo manuals, and via many books in several languages.
Supports most of vim's features and keybindings through evil-mode.

edited Jan 19 '24 at 18:29

Arch Stanton

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answered Jul 27 '10 at 11:45

YuppieNetworking

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You should mention how good reftex is. – Seamus Oct 03 '10 at 20:30
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C-c C-s to create a section (with optional label), C-c C-e to create an environment of your choice (open and close tags)... – Seamus Nov 09 '10 at 15:57
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You should try out orgtbl-mode, it's really awesome. Here's a good tutorial. – Oscar Nov 14 '10 at 15:49
3

Also note that, in a pinch, Emacs can view your .dvi or .pdf outputs in a buffer. You might need to use some version of Emacs in a window (e.g. not in a terminal). – Tikhon Jelvis Mar 07 '11 at 08:35
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C-u C-c C-e allows you to change the current environment (eg. from align to align*) C-c C-. marks the current environment. C-c C-* marks the current section. C-c C-m allows you to insert a macro (it has a large autocomplete list...) – Seamus Jun 01 '11 at 16:48
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The only con here is that one has to know or get to know emacs. This can be somehow involved but worthy! – Dror Jun 14 '11 at 05:49
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@Dror I found that as a windows user it was very easy to switch, since I was long used to hitting emacs style shortcut combos. If you do much linux-command line stuff and aren't a vim user then you'll already know most of the common keyboard shortcuts (Kill line, start of line, etc) – Canageek Oct 11 '11 at 22:03
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Using Emacs (AUCTeX) as a TeX editor has another advantage, namely the ability to select rectangles (select by column rather than row) - which makes dealing with tables/tabular environments a bit easier. (The outline mode with AUCTeX is very useful too, for long documents, allowing one to "hide" or "fold" sections.) TeXWorks is not bad, especially as an out-of-the-box editor (Emacs always requires a bit more fiddling) – emacsomancer Dec 09 '10 at 05:17
1

@Seamus I think to mark the current environment you need C-c . instead of C-c C-. – Vivi Nov 21 '12 at 09:53
1

You can open your ps/pdf with emacs using DocView mode, which is included by default. – YuppieNetworking Feb 14 '13 at 10:36
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You mention that emacs does not have directives? But isn't that wrong? I can apply directives to which mode it should be compiled with, and also specify master files? That I would say are directives? – nickpapior Feb 18 '13 at 11:44
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I agree with @zeroth. Additionally, I'm not sure if I understand TeX directives correctly, but aren't those a particular feature of TeXShop? If that's the case, then it should be renamed to something like TeX metadata or something that is not bound to an editor, but to a feature. – YuppieNetworking Feb 18 '13 at 18:17
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@YuppieNetworking It's a feature of TeXShop, of TeXworks, and of several other editors. It's not strictly a TeX thing, but merely a convention that has been made. It would be trivial to implement this into AUCTeX, and I somehow recall that this will be in a not-too-distant update to the package. – Sean Allred Aug 18 '13 at 03:01
2

Add C-c C-f for font changes, mark a region to get is changed; C-u C-c C-f to change the font (i.e., from bold to slanted). – vonbrand Feb 08 '14 at 23:05
1

In my humble opinion, the integration of AUC-TeX in xemacs is better than in GNU emacs. – vonbrand Feb 08 '14 at 23:26
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Are third-party plugins part of the benefits we would like listed here? I'm thinking about *TeX-specific packages featuring minor additions (auctex-latexmk, flyspell-babel...), big packages almost replacing a standalone program (ebib!) and also some generic-purpose packages with specific LaTeX support (yasnippets,smart-parens for example). – T. Verron Mar 02 '14 at 15:21
2

-1 for emacs. Real Programmers use Vim. – MDMoore313 Sep 20 '14 at 20:25
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Pdf-viewmode, a major mode for viewing pdf files complements TeX documents nicely. – hrkrshnn Dec 18 '15 at 09:46
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Its always broken in some way. That's why I've never used it. Currently "Preview Latex" is hosed. – A Feldman Jan 18 '18 at 17:16
Using the build in features of Emacs, you can version control your LaTeX sources files with almost any version control system. Adding package magit and you'll have the mightiest Git-Interface, I've ever seen. Creating LaTeX styles and other packages, that are to distributed: let Emacs help you to create Makefile. Want ti start with an file mode based template instead of an empty window: Emacs will happily insert them for you. – Jan Mar 09 '22 at 06:26
Please mention that reftex is not only for editing and citing bibliography databases but also to deal with all the references (to equations, theorems, figures, etc) in a latex document. – Máté Wierdl Oct 05 '23 at 23:42
I’ve changed the first screenshot. It’s a bit customized but I’d argue that the default settings are not representative of how anyone uses Emacs. My idea was to show an Emacs that looks a bit more modern while still being recognizable to somebody who opens it for the first time. Furthermore, Emacs 29 or 30 changed the purple used for keywords, and now it shows The previous screenshot is still at http://web.archive.org/web/20231012103333/https://i.stack.imgur.com/YcNY2.png – Arch Stanton Oct 14 '23 at 17:59

score 359 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 21 '22 at 16:09

359

TeXstudio — texstudio

(formerly TexMakerX)

Platforms: Windows XP/Vista/7/8/10, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD
License: GPL v2
Languages: cs, de, en, es, fr, hu, ja, pl, pt_BR, ru, vi, zh_CN
Unicode: Yes
RTL/bidi: experimental
% !TeX directives: Yes
Syntax Highlighting: Yes, customizable
Code Completion: Yes, customizable and auto-customized
Code Folding: Yes
Spell Checking: Yes, including grammar checking based on LanguageTool.
SyncTeX: Yes
Built-in Output Viewer: Yes, supports PDF
Project Management: Yes

I'd recommend TeXstudio an interesting fork of Texmaker that I find more usable and customizable.

Here is a screen shot of TeXStudio in its default configuration.

However, its numerous options will probably allow you to customize it to your liking. Here's another setup.

Other pros:

cross-platform,
writing support (incr. search, folding, navigation, auto-completion, custom macros)
inline interactive spell-checking
support to the main latex tools, including tikz, pstricks, etc.
multi-views: math, structure
svn support
runs in a usb
pdf viewer included, but can be configured to use external viewers (also with synctex)
live-updating inline preview for formulas and code segments
tools for easy table editing and table-code formatting
multiple cursors
smart BibTeX auto-complete (including multiple, comma-separated citations) and hovering on \cite text shows a preview of the BibTeX entry
document templates
very active and responsive developer and community
adjustable icon size makes it suitable for high resolution displays (preferences->show advanced options->gui scaling)
support for editing dtx files

Cons:

Does not support split editor

edited Apr 21 '22 at 16:09

schtandard

14,892

answered Nov 12 '10 at 15:10

I use TexMakerX on MacOS X and am very happy with it (apart from some random crashes, but they are very rare). Features I like best: structure view, code folding, very much ways to customize it, etc.) – MostlyHarmless Apr 08 '11 at 18:24
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Is there some place listing the differences between Texmaker and TeXstudio? – DevSolar Sep 13 '11 at 07:31
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@DevSolar Unfortunately, aside from the standard wiki comparison, I haven't been able to find any. In general, TeXStudio comes with more features and options (I always ended up choosing it over TM because the latter was missing something I wanted; on the other hand, TXS has gotten so many options it might be overwhelming nowadays). By design, however, they both have a similar look and feel, so you can easily switch if you don't like one of them. – scallops Sep 19 '11 at 00:19
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I use TeXStudio for writing, and emacs if I'm doing beamer stuff or finky math. I find this has a more pleasant interface, then I switch to something with better math support for the gnarly stuff. – Canageek Oct 11 '11 at 22:01
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TeXStudio isn't Texmaker with additional features. It was forked years ago and there are more differences now as there were in the beginning. I tried both and somehow prefer Texmaker, it just feels cleaner to me. – doblak Nov 26 '11 at 17:35
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I switched to this from TeXworks right now! – Real Dreams Apr 22 '13 at 05:17
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TexStudio, is recommended by MikTex distribution in their manual as an advanced choice editor, after spending some time toying with TexWorks (the basic choice if you are a total beginner). I couldn't stay long with TexWorks, while TexStudio is there inviting with its many features. For spell checking and language, there is some nice plugin with great potential called language tool. – doctorate May 25 '13 at 16:12
Does it have project management capability? I did not find it. – Real Dreams Jun 04 '13 at 06:37
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After using TexMaker for a year I switched to TexStudio. It has much more features, but the selling point was the much better support of custom shortcuts. It's also blazingly fast on my low-end laptop, compared to TexMaker. – dwelle Jun 11 '13 at 12:17
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I switched from TexMaker to TexStudio quite some time ago and haven't looked back. – Nicholas Hamilton Feb 04 '14 at 10:06
As of 2014, TeXStudio has received much more recent attention and releases than any other editor that I know of. Switched from Kile to TexMaker and from TexMaker to TeXStudio. Bibtex integration is particularly improved over other editors including hover to see details and smart auto-complete. The reigning king in my book. – mmdanziger Oct 21 '14 at 10:31
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I disagree with the point "Project Management: Yes". Project management support should be set "partial" and explained. In TeXstudion you actually open one or more files, and files directly included by them are automatically detected and placed in the left-side structure view, where you could openthem by double-click. But this still has a number of problems: 1. If you have more than 1 level of inclusion, you cannot see all the files unless you open all non-leaf files. 2. You cannot search across the whole project unless you keep all files in the project open. – Desik Apr 11 '15 at 16:13
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Too bad for all the nice features of TeXstudio, but I cannot adapt it to my workflow because of the lack of proper project management support. – Desik Apr 11 '15 at 16:13
@DenisBogdanas yes you are right! TeXStudio developer team should consider adding those features! – Say OL Jul 21 '15 at 13:56
This was once my editor of choice, but in the last six months or so, it's started dragging horribly whenever the auto-completion starts up. This happens on all my computers (this may be an incompatibility with Windows 10, as the problem started around the same time I upgraded) and on all documents. – Richard Rast Dec 07 '15 at 14:37
In 2015, TexStudio was certainly superior to TexMaker. – kennyB Jan 20 '16 at 19:47
Besides that, TeXStudio switched to Transifex for string translation which means that participation in correcting mistakes became easier and non-English users will benefit from improved interface translations. – Andreï V. Kostyrka Feb 22 '16 at 13:07
@Nico Could you improve the screenshot, by adding an inline formula preview as demonstrated in https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Texstudio_Screenshot.png ? I think this is a very impressive feature of TeXstudio. – Jonas Stein Jun 18 '17 at 22:25
@DevSolar In case it helps, here you can find a question about how TeXstudio compares against Texmaker: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/208219/what-are-the-main-differences-between-texmaker-and-texstudio – Vicent Nov 27 '19 at 07:42
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@Vicent: Oh wow, that's been some time since. :-D While I had been on the search myself back then, I've taken to Vim / latex-suite since and never looked back. Indeed, I do all text/source related editing with Vim now... – DevSolar Nov 27 '19 at 09:07
The best suite for LaTeX. Hands down. – Masum Apr 29 '22 at 19:59
to say that it supports 'project management' is misleading to say the least. yes, if you work in a SINGLE project at a time, it 'can'... if you use !TeX directives, in ALL files.. no sane way to have multiple instances, one per project. in git-hub, many have requested the ability of having multiple instances, each with a separated set of files (a proper project system), developers always close the requests arguing it is not needed (at one time they were sincere saying: it would broke one too many things). so nope, it is a nice system for beginners, but not for advanced users. – Frigeri Aug 17 '22 at 12:37

score 300 · Answer 3 · edited Jan 20 '24 at 20:05

300

Vim with vim-latex aka LaTeX-suite — vim vim-latex

Platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux and others
License: Open Source Charityware
Languages: ?
Unicode: Yes
RTL/bidi support: partially
% !TEX directives: No, but has modelines
Syntax Highlighting: Yes, customizable
Code Completion: Yes (using Omni Completion, extendable with SnipMate plugin)
Code Folding: Yes
Spell Checking: Yes
SyncTeX: Yes, see e.g. this question
Built-in Output Viewer: No
Project Management: ?

If you're really hardcore, you can always use Vim. There's a Vim plugin (which concurrently goes by the names vim-latex and LaTeX-suite) and whatnot appropriate for Vim which can be used to edit LaTeX files.

You can have word/command completion via <C-P> and <C-N>, to go the previous and next matches, respectively.

There is a version of Vim with graphical menus, called gVim. If it is used with LaTeX-suite, then various TeX commands are displayed in the menu bar for quick insertion in the text. (For Mac, there is a native build called MacVim.)

Features

Vim also allows for code folding, the package vim-latex offers automatic code folding. Folding can also be done manually based on a key (e.g., {{{ and }}}) to open and close automatic folds. Example of folds can be seen as follows:

Vim code folds

As per original question, some other useful features not listed elsewhere in this post include

VIM

Regular Expressions
Powerful keyboard short-cuts/commands
Extremely customizable
Smart Indenting

LaTeX-Suite

Calling the compiler is quick with \ll; viewing the result is \lv
Environments accessible with three letter sequences in insert mode:
- EEQ = equation environment
- EFI = figure environment
Customizable snippets for inserting commands and environments
Place-holders (<+text+>) can be jumped to with Ctrl-J without leaving insert mode
Inverse searching: Double click in (supported) pdf viewer and you jump to corresponding tex source line

For issues, pull request and installation from github see here.

edited Jan 20 '24 at 20:05

Dai Bowen

6,117

answered Jul 27 '10 at 15:42

EricR

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I definitely second the Vim recommendation. For instance, it's very easy to define all kinds of keyboard shortcuts (e.g. for me 5prop turns into \begin{proposition} \end{proposition}) that make typing very easy. – Akhil Mathew Jul 31 '10 at 00:17
2

Oh definitely, one of my favourites is ":imap \desc \begin{description}\item[]\end{description>" Creates a description and repositions the cursor to being typing in the description field. – EricR Jul 31 '10 at 07:35
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And even if you don't want to use the vim-latex macros, you can define silly short cuts like I do: http://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~ww278/#texres – Willie Wong Aug 03 '10 at 16:20
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vim (with plugins) and a Makefile. – Johan Aug 15 '10 at 09:40
@Johan: forget Makefiles, and try rubber – Roberto Bonvallet Nov 14 '10 at 17:01
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There is always gVim for those of you who don't like the command line. and the vim-latex plugin is very helpful for completion of commands. – Heather Feb 17 '11 at 16:29
@Dom, yeah, I've seen some screenshots of gVim with the LaTeX plugins, it looks really useful. – EricR Feb 23 '11 at 03:06
Vim has problems handling central european characters (šđčćž). I ranted about it recently on Stack Overflow (see my recent questions). Otherwise, a fine editor. – Rook Apr 04 '11 at 02:53
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I've used vim quite a bit for C/C++ programming, but I need to write proofs in Hebrew. How would that work in vim? – Robert S. Barnes Oct 09 '11 at 11:02
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@RobertS.Barnes I'm guessing this will be similar to your issue. I write papers in chinese in vim, using XeTeX, and vim accepts chinese characters perfectly fine for me, I'm yet to experience any issues with it. \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} seems to solve most problems on characters being entered correctly
@Rook Interesting.
– EricR Nov 04 '11 at 14:59
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I also use vim but without any plugins. One of the great things is that it's the usual vim environment, which I also use for mail and other applications: you don't have to learn a new environment. I haven't used vim folds yet, but it's the next thing I want to learn because it will add more structure to the editing of large LaTeX documents. What's also nice is the multiple undo-redo feature. – Jan 03 '12 at 17:35
@MarcvanDongen, the folds are amazing. They're really helpful. – EricR Apr 22 '12 at 21:33
vim-latex sucks! It replaces my 2011 TeX-Live with the 2007 version whenever I compile, and I can't find a way around that up till now. – Ayman Elmasry May 18 '12 at 19:45
@AymanElmasry, if you've found a solution to that problem that was an issue for you (maybe it's an issue for others), would you mind mentioning that in a reply to this comment? Cheers! – EricR May 19 '12 at 04:30
@EricR, Sure, I hope I do. – Ayman Elmasry May 19 '12 at 11:57
@AkhilMathew: Erm... you are aware that proposition<F5> already does that for you? By setting g:Tex_Env_proposition in your .vimrc you can redefine what exactly gets inserted, but the default is to create a begin / end environment, including a <++> at the end so you can jump out of the environment with . – DevSolar Jun 20 '12 at 07:43
@EricR: Try EDE. Check it out in the vim-latexsuite manual... – DevSolar Jun 20 '12 at 07:43
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@AymanElmasry: It's not the fault of vim-latex, it's the fault of your distribution's package stating its dependency on texlive-2007. You could either tell your package manager to ignore dependencies for the package, install a "dummy" package, or install the plugin manually instead of going through the package manager. – DevSolar Jun 20 '12 at 07:48
This comment is only about Unicode support. I have tried umpteen number of times (and failed) to display devanagari characters correctly in vim/ gvim running on Ubuntu.
Is it that vim does not support unicode or am I missing something?
– deshmukh Sep 28 '12 at 07:05
@deshmukh, okay, I was curious and tried testing this with some devangari text I found online. I've experienced two problems, under konsole I see only question marks, under gnome the glyphs are set at the wrong width. The first sounds like a font problem, the second I'm not sure how to resolve, but it seems like a gnome-terminal problem. I don't have devangari fonts installed other than what is already provided. My apologies. – EricR Sep 28 '12 at 13:30
@EricR it is unlikely to be a gnome-terminal problem. Will gnome-terminal interfere with gvim? As I mentioned, I have tried and fail to display devanagari characters either in vim running in gnome terminal or in gvim. – deshmukh Sep 30 '12 at 15:47
@deshmukh, fair enough, forgot about that when I was thinking about it. I'm sorry, this sort of problem is outside the scope of my abilities. You might ask on http://askubuntu.com/ – EricR Oct 01 '12 at 20:30
@EricR No problem at all. The only reason I put the comment here was to make sure that the information we are providing is complete and with as few errors as possible.
Also, I had already asked that question on askubuntu and the only reply I got was 'vim and gvim can not display devanagari characters (read complex scripts?)'
– deshmukh Oct 02 '12 at 06:23
@deshmukh, that's an unfortunate response from them. If you ever get an answer please feel free to share, since I love vim and wish everyone could use it for LaTeX. – EricR Oct 02 '12 at 16:49
@EricR so do I, so do I. And sure, I will post here if I ever get vim/ gvim to display complex script and request, you do the same if you hit upon a solution – deshmukh Oct 03 '12 at 06:25
It seems like vim-latex is not working at all with Win XP (you wouldn't belive how many installs are still around). Nobody in the vim-latex-devel list had anything to say to that problem. – BandGap Feb 20 '13 at 11:59
Sorry to hear that @BandGap! Given that I'm on a WinXP install currently at work I can share your pain, but I can also sympathise with the devs for not supporting an EOL'd platform. I'll let you know if I have any luck getting it to work on my work computer. – EricR Feb 21 '13 at 16:36
@EricR: Unicode Yes??? I have been trying to get my vim display devanagari characters and have NEVER been successful. Am I missing a trick or vim can't handle all of unicode but only some portion? – deshmukh Mar 17 '13 at 17:05
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@deshmukh Vim handles unicode just fine, I have no troubles with devanagari characters. You should check whether the font you use has them, and if you use the command line version of vim, if your terminal supports unicode. – Psirus Aug 14 '13 at 09:50
@Psirus Could you please recommend a terminal and a font? I use konsole 2.10.5 on KDE 4.10.5 with Droid Sans Mono font and display of devanagari characters is broken there – deshmukh Aug 14 '13 at 14:19
@deshmukh Hm, not sure what exactly is going on. Doesn't work with urxvt, but does work with xfce4-terminal, regardless of the font?! I know it also works on my work desktop, i.e. gnome-terminal with Ubuntu Mono. – Psirus Aug 14 '13 at 17:44
@Psirus Tried on Gnome Terminal 3.6.1 in KDE 4.10.5 in Ubuntu 13.04 also. But same result. It can print simple characters like जर, दर, कल but fails if I try things like जार, तार, काल, etc. – deshmukh Aug 15 '13 at 13:54
Very nice! What terminal colors are you using in the screenshot? – Christian Chapman Mar 02 '14 at 21:24
@enthdegree looks like either molokai or monokai. – Skillmon Jan 14 '20 at 19:16

score 250 · Answer 4 · edited Nov 12 '17 at 11:57

250

Texmaker — texmaker

Platforms: Windows XP/Vista/7/8, OS X 10.5+, Linux
License: GPL license, free
Languages: cs, de, el, en, es, fa, fr, gl, hu, it, nl, pl, pt, pt (bra), ru, se, sr, zh (cn), zh (tw)
Unicode: Yes
RTL/bidi: ?
% !TEX directives: No
Syntax Highlighting: Yes, customizable
Code Completion: Yes, customizable
Code Folding: Yes
Spell Checking: Yes
SyncTeX: Yes
Built-in Output Viewer: Yes, supports PDF
Project Management: Yes

Customizable code completion

Rectangular block selection

The editor TeXstudio started out as a fork of Texmaker and was originally called TexMakerX.

edited Nov 12 '17 at 11:57

marczellm

11,809

answered Jul 27 '10 at 16:32

Egon Willighagen

1,045

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texmaker and the forked texmakerx sounded quite interesting, but then I realized that they support only LaTeX. Not so useful for a plain&ConTeXt user. – Taco Hoekwater Nov 12 '10 at 14:07
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The texmakerx fork is new to me. Thanx for the tip! – Egon Willighagen Dec 16 '10 at 10:16
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TexMakerX was renamed to TexStudio. It was forked long ago and is somehow not just TexMaker with additional features, it feels different now if you just try both. I prefer TexMaker, seems cleaner to me. – doblak Nov 26 '11 at 17:38
30

This is the best Latex IDE for beginners. I tried TexWorks, TexNicCenter, Notepad++ and TexMaker. And found TexMaker to be the most user friendly for newbies. – Marcel Valdez Orozco Sep 09 '12 at 19:21
@TacoHoekwater Would plain TeX and ConTeXt just require different syntax highlighting or something besides that? We might be able to turn this into a feature listed at Let’s polish the Editors/IDEs question! – doncherry Feb 28 '13 at 01:57
14

The most useful feature of texmaker is missing in this list: whenever you have a main-tex, which \input{} other content-tex, you can tell texmaker which tex is to run (called Master Document). So you don't have to switch to the main, press F1 (for Quick Build), and switch back to the tex you are currently working on. Just do your changes in the content.tex, press F1, and view the results. Second best feature I haven't seen with other IDEs: The build-in document viewer jumps to and highlights for some seconds the latest changes. I simply love that! – Dominikus K. Mar 06 '13 at 15:13
4

-1 TexMaker does some arcane evaluation of regular expressions in its search and replace box. This is wholely inappropriate in a LaTeX editor because of the common use of various characters between LaTeX and regex. The result is that one cannot simply replace all \section{ with \subsection{. – alx9r Apr 12 '13 at 18:20
Also available as a portable edition, which is useful for people who are forced to use various computers without having admin permission. Works well with portable distributions, too. – Chaplin Jul 13 '14 at 11:24
As a note: if you download this and want the pdf viewer to display as shown above go to options->configure Texmaker and under pdf display click the checkbox labeled embed. – user2154420 Jul 13 '14 at 20:33
@MarcelValdezOrozco, "beginner-friendly" isn't really useful, you won't stay a "beginner" for very long (unless you use it so rarely that you never become proficient). – vonbrand Feb 04 '16 at 02:26
@vonbrand But it was very useful in trying to become proficient, now I just use sublime text and have custom build scripts. TexMaker helped me learn the ropes. – Marcel Valdez Orozco Feb 10 '16 at 03:10
How do I tell which of the Linux packages at https://www.xm1math.net/texmaker/download.html is the one I want for Mint 19.1? – David C. Ullrich Jun 01 '20 at 15:01

score 182 · Answer 5 · edited Nov 01 '15 at 17:41

182

TeXworks — texworks

Platforms: Windows XP/Vista/7/8, OS X, Linux all pre-compiled plus source available
License: GPL
Languages: en, af, ar, ca, cs, de, fa, fo fr, it, ja, nl, ko, pl, pl, ru, sl, tr zh
Unicode: Yes
RTL/bidi: Yes
% !TEX directives: Yes
Syntax Highlighting: Yes, regex-based
Code Completion: Yes, customizable based on 'known entry' list
Code Folding: No
Spell Checking: Yes, but have to install by hand
SyncTeX: Yes
Built-in Output Viewer: Yes, PDF (Poppler-based, auto-follow option to scroll source and preview together)
Project Management: No

Screen shot of TeXworks on the Mac: the layout stays the same on Windows and Linux:

On Windows and Linux, I use TeXworks, which provides with an editor window and a document preview window. Clicking in the document preview locates the edit mark at that TeX source corresponding to the clicked location.

edited Nov 01 '15 at 17:41

alfC

14,350

answered Jul 27 '10 at 18:14

Heath Hunnicutt

360
1
2
5

9

The fact that TeXWorks has both the goodies of a GUI (you can easily and instantly see what you get) and a pure text editor like Emacs (you, not a program, writes the code) really makes it a hot shot. – Tomas Aschan Aug 04 '10 at 16:51
2

+1 for TeXWorks --- still needs a few features that I can't live without, but I'm checking the progress regularly and I hope this could turn into the "standard" LaTeX editor. – Martin Tapankov Aug 19 '10 at 06:02
Is it reasonable to write Hebrew documents in TexWorks? – Robert S. Barnes Oct 09 '11 at 19:02
1

I love TeXWorks for easy, out-of-the-box two-way sync! – Chang Oct 21 '11 at 02:13
1

+1 for non-geek friendliness of TeXworks, which is sort of a paradox with LaTeX. I've used TeXworks to submit papers to IEEE conferences with success. – Fuhrmanator Aug 21 '12 at 20:29
You can customize TexWorks' syntax highlighting and background now (to an extent). See this post for example. Unfortunately they use regexes for parsing syntax, which makes it impossible to, for example, properly match math. So they haven't even tried yet, though it was discussed on the mailing list. – marczellm Jan 08 '13 at 21:46
1

Accesible dropdown menu to switch between different compilators (pdftex, Context (pdftex), pdflatex ...) A small minus for lack of printing possibility in the integrated pdf viewer. – PetaspeedBeaver Apr 03 '13 at 11:30
-1 for TexWorks under Windows. If you rely on text selection and navigation keyboard shortcuts customary to Windows text editors (eg. ctrl+left, ctrl+shift+left), TexWorks editor is rather infuriating to use. Some are quirky (the cursor is always jumps to the end of a selection, even if you selected right-to-left), others are missing outright (e.g. Alt-MouseSelect). – alx9r Apr 10 '13 at 15:45
How do I figure out which of the five Linux packages at https://www.xm1math.net/texmaker/download.html is the one I want for Mint 19.1? – David C. Ullrich Jun 01 '20 at 15:06

Katt · Answer 6 · 2019-01-13T16:57:17.800

175

Sublime Text with LaTeXTools plugin

Available for: Windows, Mac, Linux

This is a simple, but powerful, editor. It's similar to Notepad++, but available on multiple platforms, and much easier to setup for LaTeX with the LaTeXTools plugin, which is available from the Package Control tool. It is also similar to TextMate, but is being actively developed and has a huge community which develops plug-ins for. It's also much prettier than both of them!

Note that this commercial software, and inquires a licence after an evaluation period (costs $70 USD). It is possible to run Sublime Text without buying a licence, but you will be reminded that you are using an unregistered copy.

Sublime Text features some really powerful tools when it comes to typing, some of which you don't understand that you could do without:

multiple cursors
go-to anything
snippets
incremental find
project management
numerous build-systems

and more (take a look at Perfect Workflow in Sublime Text 2). The screenshot below also displays its feature for finding citations from BibTeX.

Sublime Text is an almost completely text based editor, with almost unlimited potential. The list of features is about as long as you want it to be. Install Package Manager, and you have a long list of repositories only a few seconds install-on-the-fly away.

Platforms: Windows, Mac, Unix
Licence: Free to try, free to buy
% !TEX directives: Yes
Syntax highlighting: Yes
Code completion: Yes
Code folding: Yes
Spell check: Yes, both built-in and external packages
SyncTeX: Yes
Built-in output viewer: No
Project management: Yes

enter image description here

edited Jan 13 '19 at 16:57

answered Jan 28 '12 at 00:22

Katt

447

6

The evaluation period can last forever, I've been using it for over a year. – levesque Feb 27 '13 at 20:06
14

Also, when used with Skim you get a very, very fast compiling PDF viewer that syncs with your code to give you the same PDF functionality that other editors provide. – BoZiffer Mar 15 '13 at 01:44
The video "Perfect Workflow in Sublime Text 2" is no longer available. Is there a good video for replacement? – Martin Thoma Mar 16 '14 at 18:56
@moose How about http://code.tutsplus.com/articles/perfect-workflow-in-sublime-text-free-course--net-27293 ? – Holene Apr 26 '14 at 01:44
2

Definitely recommend Sublime. It has vim integration, has spellchecking... Whatever you want, you can find it here! It is THE solution for all platforms :) A pity that it hasn't been voted higher up, that when I first viewed this list I didn't notice it. – xji Jun 11 '14 at 00:34
3

What on Earth does 'free to buy' mean?! Also, I am very pleased to know that it has features which I 'don't understand I could do without'. This seems very likely true since it has features of which I am entirely unaware and it is extremely probable that there are some I can do without ;). – cfr Oct 19 '14 at 23:31
1

@crf, it's shareware. Once in a while you receive a popup during saving that reminds you of that fact. The software is fully functional, even without a license. – Peter Pablo Apr 22 '15 at 14:02
With El Capitans new split screen view, you can have a very neat side-by-side setup of Skim and Sublime. – Holene Mar 21 '16 at 08:35
Can the "perfect workflow" link be updated as it no longer exists. Thanks – Tom Apr 25 '17 at 08:58
LaTeXing is abandoned , and the corresponding link in the title is dead. Someone please update this answer. – evaristegd Jan 13 '19 at 03:10
1

CAUTION latexing . com is TO BE AVOIDED --- IF you still want access to the old documentation use this wayback link https://web.archive.org/web/20180329210203/http://docs.latexing.com:80/ – Jan 13 '19 at 18:19
Currently, I am using Sublime Text more frequently than Texmaker! – raf May 22 '21 at 12:23

score 173 · Answer 7 · edited Jul 28 '22 at 08:03

173

Kile — kile

Platforms: Linux, Windows¹ (XP, Vista, 7)
License: GNU GPL 2
Languages: bg, bs, ca, cs, da, de, el, en_GB, eo, es, et, fi, fr, ga, gl, hi, hne, hu, it, ja, kk, lt, mai, ms, nb, nds, nl, nn, pl, pt, pt_BR, ro, ru, sk, sv, tr, ug, uk, zh_CN, zh_TW
Unicode: Yes
RTL/bidi: Yes
% !TEX directives: No²
Syntax Highlighting: Yes, customizable
Code Completion: Yes, customizable
Code Folding: Yes
Spell Checking: Yes [uses system dictionaries so works even for unsupported languages]
SyncTeX: Yes (but the -synctex=1 flag must be added manually to the build engine)
Built-in Output Viewer: Limited³ (PNG preview of snippets – e.g. current environment or selection – converted from DVI/PS/PDF)
Project Management: Yes
Command Line: Yes
Structure/Outline View: Yes
VI Input Mode: Yes

¹ Starting from version 3.0, there is a windows installer available. Installation instructions for 2.x versions can be found here. The Windows version of the KDE applications is not finalised, so some of them may be unstable.

² While Kile does not have !TeX directives for defining compilation tool etc., it does have some "magic comments", similar to Latexila and TeXStudio. They are %TODO and %FIXME, which appears in the structure view, for adding notes in the code, and %BEGIN/%END for defining foldable regions of code.

³ A full built-in output viewer will be available in Kile 3 and is already available by compiling the Kile git master branch

edited Jul 28 '22 at 08:03

Glorfindel

879

answered Jul 27 '10 at 10:53

hayalci

6,489

10

Kile is a wonderful program for LaTeX editing, some of the features like creating tables automatically, image insertion, and list/enumeration macros are extremely helpful. As a beginner, Kile basically taught me LaTeX. +1! – EricR Jul 27 '10 at 15:41
27

Kile is the editor when you're on Linux, and find that vim/emacs is too much effort to learn. – Martin Tapankov Aug 19 '10 at 05:44
Only until TeXworks y'know works... – Seamus Apr 08 '11 at 10:31
8

Kile's the editor I've been looking for for years. Few nagging "features" that can all be disabled, everything's customizable to my likings (and I have very special ones indeed) and so on. – David Dec 11 '11 at 19:43
4

@RyanReich GNOME the de facto standard desktop? Maybe in the US, where Red Hat is strong, but certainly not in Europe. – mafp Jan 16 '13 at 22:02
@Torbjørn Have you considered “signing up” as the Kile guy at the answer Let’s polish the Editors/IDEs question? – doncherry Mar 16 '13 at 18:30
4

I just installed it and been using all day. I think this is the best latex editor I tried so far, and I tried few. Easy to use. – Nasser Jun 17 '13 at 22:25
3

Note that although the built in viewer is limited, Okular works very well as a viewer and supports synctex, watch-file mode etc. Although Kile on Linux is buggier than TeXShop was on a Mac, and the lack of support for code directives is disappointing, it is highly customisable and the code-folding and built in command line are things I would certainly miss if I now went back to TeXShop. Also, you can use Okular within Kile using kparts plugin if you wish. – cfr Dec 22 '13 at 00:40
In 2011, when the last semi-major Kile release came out, it was quite competitive with other options on Linux. In 2014, after receiving only limited updates (last release in 2012), other editors are better. Kile is usable and stable but other editors have more features and options. – mmdanziger Oct 21 '14 at 10:39
1

@mmdanziger "other editors have more features and options", such as: ____ ? – nilon Sep 30 '16 at 13:23
@MartinTapankov, and when you are in Windows as well ;) – Charlie Oct 25 '16 at 09:01
@mmdanziger Bumping for a followup on which alternatives you're talking about. – user1717828 Nov 17 '17 at 19:09
1

@user1717828 Command completion is almost non-existent outside core commands (no math, package names, no commands from packages), usepackage doesn't link to docs like texstudio. Cite auto-complete only works with "projects" which require setup. Kile is clean and fast, I use it a lot but it's hardly feature complete. – mmdanziger Nov 20 '17 at 22:28
@mmdanziger are you talking about Kile 2.92 beta versions? if so yes, I face the same issues as you are but I really like the layout and interface. I wish there's a stable release soon. – Rene Duchamp Nov 07 '18 at 20:47

score 124 · Answer 8 · edited Apr 29 '22 at 18:45

124

TexShop

Available for: Mac
Open Source

In Mac I use TexShop, shipped with MacTeX, and works smoothly together with MacTeX.

Among the features that it has are:

Editing features

syntax highlighting
source/PDF synchronization
autocompletion of commands and environments
macros
stationery (for document templates)
latex panel of commonly used symbols
matrix panel for simple array input
import spreadsheet cells with LaTeX formatting
regex search/replace
customizable themes for coloring text and background
controls to horizontally split source or preview window
preview window document outline pane
customizable choice of auxiliary files to delete

Processing features

built-in support for TeX, LaTeX, Xe(La)TeX, Lua(La)TeX, ConTeXt, BibTeX, biber
built-in support for Sketch, Asymptote, Sage, LilyPond, LatexMk, MetaPost
user definable Engines (scripts to process documents)

edited Apr 29 '22 at 18:45

murray

7,944

answered Jul 27 '10 at 11:15

Marcos Villagra

303

10

I also like TeXShop because you can have side by side source and pdf output, also with two-way synchronization between them (Cmd+Click on a piece of code and you're taken to its place on the output). The only things I miss are tabs to organize many open files and better project management. – Juan A. Navarro Jul 30 '10 at 06:08
5

I also used TeXShop, as it is a very clean and powerful editor with a great pdf viewer included. I abandoned it because I wanted code folding and a structure (tree) view for faster navigation in my large document and therefore now I use TexMakerX (http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/339/latex-editors-ides/5281#5281) for my thesis (and TeXShop sometimes for smaller documents) – MostlyHarmless Apr 08 '11 at 18:30
3

Did they remove that feature? TeXShop used to support the use of an external editor! – cfr Dec 22 '13 at 00:33
I consider it a rather large drawback that TexShop is only available for Mac and not other platforms. – Peter Pablo Apr 22 '15 at 14:03
I use TexShop in combination with neoVim and some Latex and Snipmate Plugins. Works like a charm! There may not be an official "external editor" feature (idk), but you can open a main file with texshop and edit the content files with whatever editor you like. – mike Dec 07 '15 at 09:32
I also prefer TexShop. Together with custom keyboards – G al Cubo Jan 27 '18 at 17:47
Help I tried to download MaxTex but somehow I got TexShop instead. I was so confused (I swear I downloaded it from the MaxTex website) but now that I see this post, I think that they are related somehow. I mainly just wanted the integrated source and output, but I only have TexShop installed – user71207 Mar 14 '21 at 07:53
@user71207: The name is "MacTeX" (as in "Mac") and not "MaxTeX." The link "MacTeX Download" at https://www.tug.org/mactex/ should get you the complete MacTeX, which includes the TeXLive distribution along with the TeXShop GUI editor/front end, theGUI TeX Live Utility for updating packages, BibDesk, and Ghostscript. – murray Nov 16 '22 at 20:48
@JuanA.Navarro: TeXShop does now allow opening source windows as tabs. Just select "Always" for the "Open New Windows as Tabs" setting on the Source pane of TeXShop's Preferences menu item. – murray Nov 16 '22 at 20:53

score 113 · Answer 9 · edited Oct 19 '21 at 02:14

113

Overleaf (v2) - Online LaTeX editor in your web browser.

*Note: ShareLaTeX and Overleaf have been merged in to one Overleaf v2 and Overleaf v1 had retired on January 8th, 2019.

Unlimited projects for free
latex, pdflatex and XeLaTeX compilers
Collaborate with others, see what they are typing in real time like Google documents
Auto Complete
Multi Language spell check
Chat with online collaborators
Export and import data
Sync with Dropbox
Regular snapshots allowing for rolling back
Vim and Emacs Bindings
Custom Themes
Extensive inbuilt template library
It's Open Source, so you can install it on your own server

See other peoples cursors

command auto complete

enter image description here

edited Oct 19 '21 at 02:14

Joshua P. Swanson

261

answered May 30 '13 at 01:23

henry.oswald

658

4

The only decent option if you run Chrome OS – DavidR Dec 05 '13 at 11:38
14

I can't understand why this doesn't have more +1's! I've ceased using installed LaTeX programs entirely since finding ShareLaTeX. I can edit the same document from any device I own, even my phone if I'm in a bind. (It's a shame they don't have an app yet; their site, admittedly, just barely works on a phone.) – Jonathan E. Landrum Apr 04 '14 at 13:59
related: http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/3/compiling-documents-online – matth Jul 03 '15 at 08:31
3

ShareLaTeX has the shortcoming that its TeX distribution is only periodically updated, but has the advantages of a very well done documentation, with a lot of straightforward and useful examples for beginners, and of an excellent customer assistance. – CarLaTeX Feb 15 '17 at 10:53
1

Moreover, it is open source so you can also spin up a local version of it which means you don't need internet. – Melvin Roest Apr 04 '18 at 17:11
Overleaf (the current incernation of ShareLaTeX) has the best basic LaTeX documentation available. It's the editor I suggest to all my students as a starting point. – Joshua P. Swanson Oct 19 '21 at 02:05
Nowadays it supports compiling with LuaLaTeX too. – Orestes Mas Oct 24 '22 at 16:21
Last time I checked, it didn't have a Save As... option, which at the time made it completely worthless to me. Does it have Save As... now? – Adrian Keister Apr 21 '23 at 19:50

score 105 · Answer 10 · edited Jun 10 '20 at 12:32

105

LyX

Available for: Windows, Mac, and Linux
Open Source

I use LyX and I love it. From the webpage:

LyX is a document processor that encourages an approach to writing based on the structure of your documents (WYSIWYM) and not simply their appearance (WYSIWYG). LyX combines the power and flexibility of TeX/LaTeX with the ease of use of a graphical interface. This results in world-class support for creation of mathematical content (via a fully integrated equation editor) and structured documents like academic articles, theses, and books. In addition, staples of scientific authoring such as reference list and index creation come standard. But you can also use LyX to create a letter or a novel or a theatre play or film script. A broad array of ready, well-designed document layouts are built in.

Quite intuitive and user-friendly, and it is possible to import from and (more importantly) export to LaTeX.

Too many useful features to mention, but I'll mention one that I find extra good: If you want to typeset a "2-dimensional" math expression, LyX is the way to go. I have used LyX for nearly ten years. Switched to AUCTeX recently, but I still use LyX whenever I want to get the LaTeX code for a complicated math expression.

enter image description here

edited Jun 10 '20 at 12:32

Community

1

answered Jul 27 '10 at 14:37

gphilip

1,497
3
13
16

29

The thing I don't like about LyX (or WYSIWYG-ish in general) is that it puts an emphasis format (that's all you see!) rather than content structure (which is hidden behind the format). LaTeX code does it the other way around, the structure is explicit and this helps you focus on the content rather than the format of your document. – Juan A. Navarro Jul 30 '10 at 06:01
19

I really don't like LyX, but I don't think that this is grounds to downvote you :) – Vivi Jul 30 '10 at 07:40
76

I really do like LyX, but: LyX is not an LaTeX Editor and we really, really should stop selling it as such! LyX is a document system in its own respect with an own document format, it just uses LaTeX as (one) backend. So every LyX document can be exported to LaTeX, but not every LaTeX document can be imported into LyX (even though simple stuff works pretty well). If collaborating on some document, all or no authors have to use LyX. This, by definition, does not qualify LyX as an "editor". – Daniel Jan 04 '12 at 09:22
Just started playing around a little with the LyX 2.0 beta. Quite a significant collection of new features- Have a look at http://wiki.lyx.org/LyX/NewInLyX20 But LyX is very much a WYSIWYM sort of editor, and I sort of like editing the La/TeX directly. That being said- I largely use TeXShop and/or bbedit on the Mac. I personally am not looking for a bunch of bells and whistles, just a good editor. – flip Nov 12 '10 at 14:40
15

@JuanA.Navarro Interesting, I feel exactly the other way around. When looking at raw LaTeX code, I find it hard to focus on the content, since it is mixed with the structure and formatting aspects of the document. Also, the displaying of chapter and section titles in big, bold fonts (instead of the same way as normal text) makes it much easier for me to understand and modify the structure of my document. – rolve Apr 09 '13 at 13:43
4

@rolve, it all depends on how you tend to write your code. I have seen very messy code mixing content/formatting within the body of the document, but by using semantically defined commands you can make the distinction very explicit. – Juan A. Navarro Apr 09 '13 at 17:59
Was really hoping to like LyX, but the quirky latex importing (doesn't work for everything) and its lack of moderncv compatibility is really disappointing. – rickhg12hs May 08 '13 at 09:09
1

@rolve, the advantage of (La)TeX is that you get to concentrate on the contents and logical structure, not on how it looks. That is for final polish. Plus you can easily reformat for the vagaries of theses and random journals changing a few lines if you are a bit careful. – vonbrand Feb 08 '14 at 23:13
3

@JuanA.Navarro, for me the fact that Lyx injects all sort of messy macros (and writes out the source with awful indentation and spacing) is the put off. – vonbrand Feb 08 '14 at 23:14
2

Wow, there are actually someone who doesn't like LyX? I agree with @rolve, I find it much easier to focus on structure when using LyX. LyX is no WYSIWYG - it's a WYSIWYMean. After all, LyX does none of the advanced formatting (hyphenation, figure placement, toc generation) that LaTeX does. But it marks the section captions and the other parts of the text in an intuitive way, instead of markup codes. You must still compile to see the output. – akvilas Sep 30 '15 at 06:29
1

LyX is useful for your first steps with LaTeX. – Karlo Dec 07 '15 at 09:49
4

LyX is best used as training wheels. At some point taking them off is the only way to ride. – A Feldman Jun 01 '16 at 00:28

score 100 · Answer 11 · edited Jun 10 '20 at 12:32

100

TeXnicCenter — texniccenter

Platforms: Windows XP/Vista/7/8/10
Open Source
Languages: English, German, more dictionaries for spelling control downloadable
Unicode: Yes (in version 2, which was released mid-september 2013).
RTL/bidi: ?
% !TEX directives: No
Syntax Highlighting: Yes, customizable (also background colour)
Code Completion: Yes
Code Folding: Yes
Spell Checking: Yes
SyncTeX: Yes
Built-in Output Viewer: No. You can config TeXnicCenter to use an external PDF viewer like Acrobat Reader or SumatraPDF with synchronized viewing.
Project Management: Yes

I highly recommend TeXnicCenter. It stands out because it is the right mix between a GUI heavy editor (think Lyx) and no GUI (think emacs). Moreover, it is very easy to setup on Windows; and it integrates with MiKTeX without requiring extra configuration.

An easy-to-navigate user interface provides a document tree, editor and compiling output as well as a vast array of drop-down menus:

^{Click image to enlarge}

Customizable profiles allow for manipulating of latex, bibtex and makeindex parameters, as well as post-processing features and viewer parameters (e.g. forward and backward search):

^{Click image to enlarge}

TeXnicCenter also allows to jump directly to the line that caused an error and provides code completion. TeXnicCenter has easy and integrated project management tools, and handles multiple files conveniently. It can be synchronized with pdf viewers such as Adobe Reader or SumatraPDF to provide forward and backward search options. Forward and backward search lets user jump and navigate between LaTeX code and pdf output seamlessly.

edited Jun 10 '20 at 12:32

Community

1

answered Jul 27 '10 at 14:51

nav

371

2

I've been using TeXnicCenter for years. It's great! – Rebekah Jul 27 '10 at 16:36
Yup, still using it. Don't see too much development on it lately, but I have an old installation together with MikTeX and works pretty well. – Leonardo Herrera Jul 27 '10 at 16:48
2

TeXnicCenter does not run on linux directly, but perhaps through wine? – fryguybob Jul 27 '10 at 16:49
@percusse It supports UTF-8 (or we jus got lucky with our 200+ page book and the Hungarian (magyar) accented characters áéíóöőúüű). :) – masu Oct 31 '13 at 09:09
the auto-completion feature is limited to a pre-defined build-in set of commands. There is no comfortable way of extending it. It also does not "learn" commands from \newcommand in the document – masgo Sep 22 '15 at 12:40
1

@masgo I wouldn't call it uncomfortable. It is pretty straightforward http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/86253/editing-texniccenter-source-code-for-align – percusse Oct 12 '15 at 21:37
1

@percusse The explanation given there is like the definition of uncomfortable for me: Go to some folder, edit a file as administrator, write XML by hand, use HTML encoding while doing so. And the commands apply globally and are not project specific. - Also the sentence: "but if you include too many of them it will just get slower and slower since as the number of possibilities increase so is the time to scan for them." It seems like no clever mechanism like a prefix tree is used. – masgo Nov 06 '15 at 16:07
@masgo That's because TeX doesn't have a fixed list of reserved keywords. You have to come up with your custom list. It can certainly be improved but it is straightforward in my book as is. It takes a few clicks to define what you describe here. – percusse Nov 06 '15 at 16:21
1

It is a pity that v2.02 from September 2013 appears to be the final release. – u17 Feb 02 '22 at 16:44
1

I have been using TeXnicCenter for years, by far the most convenient LaTeX project management/editor, BUT, it is getting old and with Windows 11 (I just switched over it) it doesn't works well anymore :/ at first, everything seems fine under windows 11, but some random anomalies and errors keep popping up (the most recent complaining that pdflatex (MiKTeX) isn't a w32 program ... so I'm in the search of a replacement with a true project management (which most other options here, completely lack). – Frigeri Aug 17 '22 at 12:56

score 75 · Answer 12 · edited Apr 29 '22 at 17:28

WinEdt — winedt

Platforms: (Windows XP until version 9.1)/Vista/7/8/10/11
License: Shareware, personal license $40-$100
Languages: en
Unicode: Yes (from version 7)
RTL/bidi: Yes (from version 10)
% !TEX directives: Probably possible.
Syntax Highlighting: Yes, customizable and including a .dtx mode
Code Completion: Yes, customizable
Code Folding: Yes, customizable (from version 8)
Spell Checking: Yes
SyncTeX: Yes with appropriate PDF viewer (e.g. SumatraPDF or built-in)
Built-in Output Viewer: Yes (from version 11, not fully built-in but in a separate window)
Project Management: Yes, own project management system and outliner

A lot of useful add-ons for WinEdt can be found on the WinEdt's Community site

WinEdt is a good option on Windows.

I wrote a post on some of the features I liked in WinEdt 6.0. To summarise:

Tree View can be customised
Automatically display your current location in TOC
Colour coding that aids usability
Intelligent defaults
Options to customise almost anything
Easy configuration interface with MikTeX
One click build process for LaTeX documents
Intuitive default shortcut keys and intuitive alt menu letters

It's not free, but it's also not that expensive.

WinEdt's new full Unicode support and its translation tables allow to show ∀α in the screen but to write {\forall}{\alpha} in the disk.

@percusse I enjoyed learning LaTeX with WinEdt, but I found that eventually I wanted a true programmer's editor that I could use for a broader range of editing tasks. I know use Vim. — Jeromy Anglim, Aug 22 '11 at 10:40
BTW: DANTE members get a nice discount on the editor: http://www.dante.de/index/Intern/WinEdt.html (German) — topskip, Mar 19 '12 at 20:18
I would add search/inverse search possibility - you can jump to the place in the rendered file which you are currently editing, and, more importantly, jump from the place in the dvi file which you are currently reviewing to its TeX code. — მამუკა ჯიბლაძე, Mar 19 '14 at 04:59

BadAtLaTeX · Answer 13 · 2019-06-14T19:14:42.913

Visual Studio Code with LaTeX-Workshop (on GitHub)

other extensions are available

Platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux
License: open source (on GitHub), License MIT
Languages: de, en, fr, ...
Unicode: Yes
RTL/bidi: ...
% !TEX directives: Yes
Syntax Highlighting: Yes, customizable (extensions)
Code Completion: Yes, customizable (extensions)
Code Folding: Yes
Spell Checking: Yes
SyncTeX: Yes
Built-in Output Viewer: Yes
Project Management: Yes
Autosave: Yes
Line Spacing: Yes

note: picture from LaTeX-Workshop description (link: animated gif)

score 65 · Answer 14 · edited Feb 25 '23 at 02:50

65

Texifier — texpad

Platforms: Mac (and iOS)
License: Commercial
Languages: English, German and Japanese
Unicode: Yes
% !TeX directives: Yes
Syntax Highlighting: Yes
Auto-typeset: OSX only
Code Completion: Yes, command completion and autofill
Code Folding: No
Spell Checking: Yes
SyncTeX: Yes
Built-in Output Viewer: Yes, supports PDF
Project Management: Yes, included files opened automatically

enter image description here

Both

Document outline (navigatable table of sections, subsection, etc)
Auto-detection of typesetting chain (bibtex, makeindex, etc.)
Global search
Biber support

OSX

Custom typeset scripts
Snippets and code macros

iOS

Onboard typesetter with support for Virtual fonts, e-TeX and PGF (beamer/tikz).
Built in bundle manager
Typesetting API to provide typesetting services to other applications

edited Feb 25 '23 at 02:50

user202729

7,143

answered Apr 29 '13 at 14:35

VV Texpad

873

11

This should really be higher on the list. – lyxicon Dec 08 '13 at 07:05
4

@lyxicon - Yes, this app is awesome. – Kiyoshi Feb 08 '14 at 15:13
3

really love this one – Runar Dec 31 '15 at 05:15
5

This is the first app for Mac I ever purchased, and I never regretted it. – thiagoveloso Nov 27 '16 at 10:43
8

I downloaded the trial version and I did not even need 24 hours to purchase it! It's amazing and it has the best user interface ever. Updates are regular and developers always get back to you whenever you contact them. Recommended 120%. – EoDmnFOr3q Mar 26 '17 at 14:55
I wish there was something like this for Windows!! amazing app – jjunju Dec 08 '19 at 17:20
It seems there is a beta windows version https://www.texpad.com/windows – Yrogirg Aug 26 '20 at 18:56

score 61 · Answer 15 · edited Mar 26 '17 at 14:59

61

TeXlipse

Available for: Windows, Mac, Linux and others (Java based)
Open Source

I've been happily using TeXlipse in Eclipse for a long time, it has integrated code completion (including BibTeX entries), customizable templates, an outline view - and being integrated into Eclipse it includes all useful stuff I'm used to when working in Eclipse, like editor shortcuts, version control, etc.

There is also an Eclipse pdf viewer plugin Pdf4Eclipse with complete support of SyncTeX, which allows forward and reverse search in LaTeX documents. Since TeXlipse rebuilds the LaTeX sources automatically (in background) after a save, the code and the preview of the document are always synchronized.

^{Click image to enlarge}

edited Mar 26 '17 at 14:59

CampanIgnis

4,624

answered Jul 27 '10 at 14:58

Fabian Steeg

1,573
14
11

3

Does TeXlipse / Eclipse compile the documents well? Including running pdflatex and bibtex multiple times? – Dima Jul 27 '10 at 15:04
1

@Dima Yes, and also makeindex works just fine. – Fabian Steeg Jul 27 '10 at 20:06
8

It's probably worth mentioning that Eclipse might not be the best choice to install as a TeX-only IDE if you don't already have it, just because it's rather large and has many features that aren't needed to write up an assignment, for example. – Michael Underwood Jul 27 '10 at 20:11
@Michael: I disagree. On the contrary, even if you have Eclipse already it makes sense to create a separate install for TeXlipse because TeXlipse does not play well with other plugins. – Christopher Oezbek Aug 15 '10 at 13:10
@Christopher, that's not really what I meant -- if that's the case then it's a problem with TeXlipse but that's another issue. What I meant was that if somebody is looking to get started with a TeX IDE and they don't already have Eclipse and aren't familiar with it, then Eclipse is probably not the right solution for them. – Michael Underwood Aug 16 '10 at 04:41
3

One plugin that is almost essential for PhD writers is integrated SVN/GIT backup using subclipse/eGit. Every edit is retrievable and can be stored in the cloud. There's enough horror stories on the net about losing one's thesis because of a hard-drive failure the week before the viva/printing etc – DGarside Mar 14 '12 at 21:11
6

I'm surprised Texlipse scores so low on this. To my mind it is far superior to many of the bespoke LaTeX packages. It automatically flags up errors AS YOU TYPE THEM, and compiles smartly so that minor errors are ignored. Consequently the time spent dealing with errors is greatly reduced. Compiling is a doddle as one can edit while compiling. The "Templates" feature (CTRL + SPACE) is superb. It also runs without installation if like me you are working on a locked-down Windows machine. As mentioned above SVN is a major plus. – Nick Riches Feb 11 '13 at 11:07
3

My problem is that Eclipse needs to put everything in projects, so you don't simply edit and compile a .tex file. Instead you have to click through the New Project Wizard. Or am I wrong? – marczellm Mar 09 '13 at 10:34
Hi marc, I'll reply to that. Yes, it is a bit of a pain, and one of the downsides of using Texlipse. The main difficulty I've had is syncing across machines, as each computer stores computer-specific information somewhere in the workspace. Still haven't found a solution for that. – Nick Riches Nov 14 '13 at 11:24
@NickRiches Maybe using a version control system (e.g. git) and excluding computer related files may be a workaround. The benefits brought by Eclipse are however more important than the downsides for me. And the fact that it is large (256Mb for a basic installation) is not a real problem (compared to my LaTeX installation spends 2Gb on my disk). A really great tool. – lauhub Oct 03 '14 at 11:19
I have used TeXlipse for a while, but it was painful to configure for my needs, to have version control, soft word wrap, spell checking, etc. The thing that ultimately convinced me to search this list for something else is that TeXlipse always builds your project 3 times, to link correctly all the references. Since my thesis has grown larger, I have to constantly comment various chapters to get sane compilation times. I want an IDE that allows me to compile just once. – Desik Apr 10 '15 at 15:34
Also it is not maintained since 2011 ! – Desik Apr 10 '15 at 15:39
One of the few IDEs that have proper project management support, support for all major VCS, and many other features that come automatically from being a plugin for Eclipse. Too bad it is not maintained since 2011. After reviewing all this list, I'm still choosing TeXlipse over TeXstudio. – Desik Apr 11 '15 at 16:16
Texlipse is now maintained by Eclipse since 2017: https://projects.eclipse.org/projects/science.texlipse – Paul Paulsen Jan 23 '19 at 08:58

score 56 · Answer 16 · edited Jun 10 '20 at 12:32

56

Atom with `latex`, `latex-plus`, or `latextools` packages

Platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux
Licence: Open source (MIT license)
% !TEX directives: Yes
Syntax highlighting: Yes (with language-latex package), customizable
Code completion: Yes, customizable
Code folding: Yes
Spell check: Yes
SyncTeX: Yes
Built-in output viewer: Yes (with pdf-view package)
Project management: Yes (with atom-project-manager package)

Atom is a modern, approachable, yet throughly hackable text editor based on web technologies, with a large community providing extensions through its highly customizable package system. Atom has packages providing Git integration, BibTeX autocompletion and many other features. It draws frequent comparisons with Sublime Text, but has the notable advantage of being open source and completely free.

To compile LaTeX from within the editor, one may choose from a number of packages: latex, latex-plus, and latextools. The last one is an ongoing port of Sublime Text's LaTeXTools plugin and seems to be the most feature-rich of the three (as of 2016-03-20), with additional goodies like reference and bibliography completion as well as environment wrapping. Alternatively, the latexer package also provides reference and bibliography completion.

Syntax highlighting is separately provided by the language-latex package. The output can be automatically opened and synced within the editor through the pdf-view package, or in an external viewer.

enter image description here

edited Jun 10 '20 at 12:32

Community

1

answered Aug 08 '14 at 08:12

You

6,713
2
29
27

latextools + language-latex seems to be the best package combination to me as well. However I find atom quite unstable, crashing 2 to 3 times a day with data loss... – jan-glx Apr 09 '16 at 09:12
@YAK That is odd. I use the same two packages for LaTeX and Atom doesn't crash on me. – edwinksl Jun 21 '16 at 10:56
1

If you build your pdf with "Cmd + alt + b", how to you keep the builder from dumping all that .log, .aux, .fls etc. files in your directory? I'd like to keep my .tex files alone – alsdkjasdlkja Jun 26 '16 at 00:11
I have a Windows 10 x64 PC. I have Atom, latextools, languagelatex and pdf-view installed. When I try to build the PDF (pdfLaTeX), there's an error, stating, ! LaTeX Error: Filememoir.cls' not found.` I've added the path to MikTex to TeXpath. I still get the error. – Ram Iyer Sep 12 '16 at 19:12
2

@nxrd Probably a late response, but others might be interested, latextools has this as an upcoming feature. In the meantime, you can delete your temp files with the keystroke cmd+L backspace. – Runar Oct 26 '16 at 19:23
I use Atom solely for LaTeX editing. A combination of the following packages gives imo a complete LaTeX editor. latex atom-beautify atom-ide-ui autocomplete-en-en autocomplete-glossaries autocomplete-latex-cite autocomplete-latex-references – Jelle Spijker Feb 03 '18 at 16:52
cont. file-icons intentions language-latex latex-autocomplete linter-chktex linter-spell linter-spell-latex linter-ui-default pdf-view preview-inline – Jelle Spijker Feb 03 '18 at 16:53
1

How is it wrt to RTL support? – Ur Ya'ar Mar 18 '18 at 20:51
@alsdkjasdlkja "Cmd + alt + c" is a default shortcut to run a LaTeX clean. In the latex package settings, you can define which files will be deleted - most of the auxilary files are there by default, but if something's missing, you can add it in the "Clean patterns" setting. – natka_m Apr 08 '20 at 21:35
RTL support seems to be so so, some problems still seem to exist wrt text selection. – Jasper Habicht Oct 30 '21 at 18:28
4

RIP Atom. It was nice knowing you. – frabjous Jun 12 '22 at 15:39
The title should somehow indicate Atom is no longer available! There's a fork called Pulsar, which seems to be developed. – Celdor Feb 20 '23 at 09:38
@Celdor feel free to suggest an edit and/or post a new answer; I haven't used Atom at all in the last six years or so, so I don't feel qualified to keep this answer up-to-date. – You Feb 21 '23 at 07:42

score 55 · Answer 17 · edited Jun 10 '20 at 12:32

Notepad++

Platforms: Windows XP/Vista/7/8
License: Free software (GPL)
Languages: en, zh, fr, es, hu, ru, nl, pl, de, it, da, cs, sl, sk, uk, tr, pt, no, sv, ca, ar, lt, gl, fi, el, ro, ko, he, fa, sgs, bg, id, sq, ja, hr, ka, eu, be, sr, nn, th, ms, oc, fur, lb, tl, uz, kk, af, ky, mk, lv, ta, az, bs, eo, lij, hi, sc, ug, te, an, si
Unicode: Yes
RTL/bidi: Yes
% !TEX directives: No
Syntax Highlighting: Yes, customizable (also background color)
Code Completion: Yes, customizable
Code Folding: Yes
Spell Checking: Yes (through DSpellCheck)
SyncTeX: Yes
Built-in Output Viewer: No. You can configure notepad++ to use an external PDF viewer like Acrobat Reader or SumatraPDF with forward and backward searching.
Project Management: Yes (no master file)

I use Notepad++ and I love it. It has all the powerful features you expect from a good text editor (powerful find/replace, regex, macros, plugin support, etc.) and lots of features for coding, like syntax highlighting (and it has built-in rules for TeX), code folding, etc. The best part is that you can map keys to run external programs, so all you have to do is tap a bound key and it instantly runs your favorite compiler or automator and displays your output in one step, outputting errors in the command window if there are any.

It's not made exclusively for TeX, but if you're on Windows and want to use a single text editor for many purposes, one of which is TeX, Notepad++ is a very good option.

This question has answers with two methods of setting up the connection between notepad++ and a TeX distribution, as well as with SumatraPDF.

I would really second this approach as Notepad++ has capabilities far beyond what any editor on Windows have. (from my experience). The easiness in creating macros, recording, etc. is surprising and it does all this with one program! — nickpapior, Mar 25 '12 at 18:09
.bib syntax highlighting is available as an add-on as well. And regex find/replace built in is very useful. — Chris H, Jul 31 '13 at 13:40
I use notepad++ for my bib files, as it is more bare bones and easier to get what I want done. Also if I don't use emacs a lot it is hard to flip into its shortcuts from windows programs, though I admit it is better for what I want to do. — Canageek, Jul 02 '14 at 17:52
I particularly agree with the last-but-one paragraph "if you're on Windows...". — MattAllegro, Nov 10 '14 at 21:28
There is a native Linux port of Notepad++: see http://askubuntu.com/a/413179/16395 (I do not know if it has the same LaTeX capabilty, though). — Rmano, Apr 12 '16 at 14:31

score 53 · Answer 18 · edited Dec 06 '22 at 18:42

Gummi

Platforms: Linux (unstable development version for Windows exists)
License: Open Source (MIT)
Languages: ar, ca, cs, da, de, el, es, fr, hu, it, nl, pl, pt, pt-BR, ro, ru, zh-CN, zh-TW
Unicode: Yes
RTL/bidi support: ?
% !TEX directives: Yes
Syntax Highlighting: Yes
Code Completion: No, but shortcuts to code snippets.
Code Folding: No,
Spell Checking: Yes (liited
SyncTeX: Yes
Built-in Output Viewer: Yes
Project Management: Yes

Emacs is great, but what I generally use is Gummi. It has a 2-pane live preview which is really useful for catching syntax errors and formatting errors early on. Plus, when you save your latex document it will automatically save a pdf copy. Other features include helpers for matrix and table editing, inserting images, and a citing tool. Even better, there are configurable snippets of code. For example just writing "item" + Tab write an itemize environment and the first item, and left the cursor after \item.

It should be noted that Gummi really work with a hidden temporal copy as .file.tex.swp (instead that directly with file.tex) for previews, and the same happen with auxiliary files. This has the advantage that your working directory apparently remain clean but occasionally this can produce unexpected errors (e.g., using \jobname in Gummi)

screenshot

Gummi is really useful when you are creating the code for a picture (eg PSTricks or Tikz). You'll see your picture change as you add to your code. — DJP, Jul 22 '11 at 16:02
Gummi is a really minimalist, distraction-free excellent piece of code. The Windows version is not so often updated, but works fine. — Frederico Lopes, Oct 16 '12 at 19:16

score 46 · Answer 19 · edited Dec 07 '15 at 06:36

Vim with vimtex — vim

Platforms: GNU/Linux, MS Windows, Mac, wherever you get Vim with clientserver and a TeX distribution with latexmk running
License: Vim License (Vim), MIT License (vimtex)
Unicode: Yes
RTL/bidi support: Partial
% !TEX directives: Only % !TEX root, however, Vim by itself supports many things such as modelines and buffer-local variables
Syntax highlighting: Yes, customizable via colorschemes; further support for the listings package, minted package, as well as some minor improvements on top of the built in Vim syntax plugin
Code completion: Yes; added completion of references and labels via omni-completion, auto-completion available with e.g. neocomplete and YouCompleteMe
Code folding: Yes (according to document's structure)
Spell checking: Yes (built into Vim)
SyncTeX: Yes (additional hacks for viewers which do not use SyncTeX available)
Built-in output viewer: No
Project management: vimtex supports multi-file documents, but does not provide a way to manage a project per se

I believe Vim needs no introduction. vimtex can be seen as a continuation of LaTeX-Box and is probably the best TeX plugin available for Vim at the moment of speaking. Compilation is handled very smoothly through latexmk. Most popular PDF viewers are supported (including some which by themselves cannot do forward searching).

See a list of features here or read the docs. Unlike LaTeX-Suite, vimtex is a more modern plugin and encourages a much less monolithic design. For example, it provides an omni-complete function for references and labels, but leaves it up to other, more specialized plugins, to automatically call this function.

I think https://github.com/xuhdev/vim-latex-live-preview can be used as a built-in output viewer — Fabian Pijcke, Mar 18 '17 at 09:09
I think this is still the best way as of 2023. One nice addition is to use some snippet engine to complete the mostly rather long Latex commands. This makes it possible to tex live during lectures or seminars. — Gargantuar, Dec 21 '23 at 15:54

score 46 · Answer 20 · edited Apr 22 '12 at 21:24

gedit with the gedit-LaTeX-plugin

Available for: Windows, Mac, Linux and others
Open Source
Unicode: yes
RTL/bidi: yes

It has a clean interface and provides: Code Completion, Spell Checking, Syntax Checking and Validation, Outlines, Wizards, BibTeX Integration, Template Editing, User-Defined Snippets and a preconfigured comprehensive build system using rubber (including LaTeX → DVI with source specials for inverse search).

For my gedit LaTeX suite to be complete, I add two other plugins, first the 'Control your tabs' plugin to get Ctrl-(Shift)-Tab behavior, and also the AutoCompletion plugin which provides automatic suggestions for completion of any word, based on the words already present in the document - it can be a real time saver.

Temporary edit: Currently the plugin is not ready for release with gedit 3. So, if you're running the latest Ubuntu (11.10) or like being cutting edge, you need to manually install the LaTeX-plugin. The easiest way is to download the version you want from here extract and install with the standard ./configure, make, sudo make install sequence. Read the INSTALL file in the archive for more details. You can also get the most recent version of the plugin from their git repository.

Note: If the ./configure script gives the error "No package ‘gtk+-3.0′ found" then, under Ubuntu, run sudo apt-get install libgtk-3-dev and then try the script again.

@Simon does this have code folding and tabs to manage multiple files? — TheRealFakeNews, May 05 '13 at 19:58
I personally find it the best editor out there for latex with heavily "bidi" texts. It needs a couple of tweaks and configurations but after a while it works perfectly. — Habib, Sep 23 '18 at 08:09

score 38 · Answer 21 · edited Dec 06 '22 at 17:25

38

TextMate

Available for: Mac
Free & Open Source since 2012 August i.e. version 2.0

With OS X I use TextMate with MacTeX. Now I don't want to change OS X for Linux only because I work with TextMate. It's powerful like vim and emacs. It's not free 45 euros. You can do all what you want and you can use and define snippets, macros, commands with shell programming or python or ruby. You can use it for mails or you can create HTML pages or you can programming with R, or Ruby. Perhaps to like this editor you need to learn a programming language like ruby or python (Perl and bash can be used). You can try it during one month for free.

Some screenshots:

^{Click image to enlarge}
In this screenshot, you can see the bundles and in the LaTeX bundle you can see some commands and macros. You can define your personal bundle like my "latex author", you can work with the terminal from TextMate. You can find some movies on the net, to see how to work with TextMate.

EDIT: Since version 2.0, TextMate has gone open source, here it is the link to Github.

edited Dec 06 '22 at 17:25

user8395964

51

answered May 31 '11 at 20:55

Alain Matthes

95,075

How do you view your compiled source? – Alan Munn May 31 '11 at 22:56
Command R = Typset & View (the first item of the last screenshot) You have preferences to use pdflatex or latex, xetex etc. but you can create your personal script – Alain Matthes Jun 01 '11 at 04:45
Sorry, that wasn't really what I meant. You need some extra program to view the PDF, right? I was asking about how that works. (e.g. is there source/pdf synch?) – Alan Munn Jun 01 '11 at 10:39
@Alan Ok ! I use Skim it's possible to synchronize tex files and pdf. Some users use TexShop to view the pdfs. Sometimes I use Adobe Reader but I prefer Skim. It's possible to use TextMate, but this is very elementary. – Alain Matthes Jun 01 '11 at 10:58
The new version 2 is not commercial anymore. – Manuel Nov 21 '12 at 18:25
@AlainMatthes Wait... So is it free now? – TheRealFakeNews May 05 '13 at 19:42

Serge · Answer 22 · 2012-09-28T03:39:35.337

37

KtikZ

Available for: Linux and Windows
Open Source

I am a big fan of the Linux editor Ktikz. By default Ktikz is meant to be a real-time editor for TikZ pictures. However, one can edit any type of environment just by editing the default template. Moreover, by creating a template consisting only of the text

<>

one can get real-time compilation of LaTeX documents.

I usually restrict my use of Ktikz to editing Beamer presentations or drawing TikZ pictures (or other projects where the visual output needs extra attention or tweaking). For other purposes the real-time compilation can be more of a distraction than it is worth.

For windows users: install QtikZ (also available in the link). Tested with windows 7 and miktex 2.9, and it works with no problem.

edited Sep 28 '12 at 03:39

answered Aug 08 '10 at 01:10

Serge

1,357

1

I recently made a 150 pages document (class notes) entirely in LaTeX and TikZ. It was a great help for complicated drawings. – fabikw Nov 12 '10 at 19:20
This is great! I just used it on windows and it works perfectly! – Heidar Oct 15 '11 at 15:53
Recently, I updated my texlive2015 to the version Texlive2018. However,strange things happened. Qtikz worked perfectly with texlive2015,but it didn't work with texlive 2018. Though I add the correct path of pdflatex and pdftops, it still shows that ' could not load LaTeX logfile.' How can I solve this problem? Please – user450201 Jun 10 '18 at 02:07

score 26 · Answer 23 · edited Jun 10 '20 at 12:32

26

LEd

Available for: Windows
Freeware

Note: Development of LEd has stopped, and the last version is from 2009.

I can recommend LEd. It is Windows only and is just not working on some computers, still it is very functional; standard things like spelling, tree views, macros are present, while it has some more nice functions. I especially like a toolbar for beamer, but also noticeable is an option in search which can be used to highlight occurrences of a few queries at a time (regex supported of course).

enter image description here

edited Jun 10 '20 at 12:32

Community

1

answered Jul 27 '10 at 11:06

8

I used LEd for a while and liked a lot of the features, but eventually I ran into too many bugs and moved to TeXnicCenter. – fryguybob Jul 27 '10 at 16:50
1

I wish it were supported (at least bug fixing, making it run on Windows7,...) properly. It is a great editor. – Skarab Jan 20 '12 at 09:57

score 22 · Answer 24 · edited Feb 04 '19 at 07:02

GNOME LaTeX (previously named LaTeXila)

Platforms: Linux
License: Yes, GPLv3+
Unicode: Yes
Syntax highlighting: Yes
Code completion: Yes, not customizable
Code Folding: No
Spell Checking: Yes
SyncTeX: Yes, with Evince pdf viewer
Built-in Output Viewer: No
Project Management: Yes
Autosave: Yes

GNOME LaTeX is an Integrated LaTeX Environment for the GNOME desktop. It has a very nice and clean interface. Its available in Ubuntu software center.

GNOME LaTeX doesn't have an integrated output viewer, but it works well with Evince which is also a GNOME application. It has customizable one-click buttons to build, view and convert documents.

It has some "magic" comments for making todonotes, which will show up in the structure panel on the left hand side. These are %TODO and %FIXME, in both cases followed by some text (if there is no text, it won't show in the panel).

score 22 · Answer 25 · edited Jul 18 '17 at 23:47

22

BaKoMa TeX Word — bakoma

platforms: Windows, OS X, Linux
License: commercial -- €55 or $101 per licence (other quantity discounts)
Languages: English
Unicode: Yes
Syntax Highlighting: Yes, customizable
Code Completion: Yes, customizable
Code Folding: No
Spell Checking: Yes
SyncTeX: ?
Built-in Output Viewer: Yes. Can view output in real time, and directly edit output file
Project Management: Yes

I think BaKoMa is an innovative useful WYSIWYG editor. It allows users to edit both in the .tex file and in the output file. The real-time preview feature can come in handy when creating graphics and figures (e.g. using PSTricks or TikZ). In a review of BaKoMa, Martin Osborne made the following comment:

If you find the output of \int_0^\infty hard to visualize, you'll definitely have trouble with the output of
\psline(25,25)(25,0)
\psline(0,0)(50,0)
\psset{origin={25,0},unit=25mm}
\psplot{-1}{1}{x dup mul}
[BaKoMa] TeX Word makes it easy: you type the code and the output appears instantly. For me, TeX Word has cut the production time for figures by at least 75%.

edited Jul 18 '17 at 23:47

Henri Menke

109,596

answered Apr 26 '12 at 09:19

Real Dreams

8,298
12
56
78

@AlanH: I did include a link to their licensing page. Should I make it more explicit? – Herr K. May 05 '13 at 20:55
1

@Kevin Yeah, it might be nice to list how much it costs. It's quite substantial. – TheRealFakeNews May 05 '13 at 20:57
7

There are three things I don't understand about BaKoMa. 1. Why isn't it more widely used? You edit the TeX code and instantly see the output, or just edit the output---saving a huge amount of time. How is it possible to create slides, for example, any other way? 2. Why isn't there an open source project to develop a similar system? 3. How can anyone complain about paying the price of dinner for two for a system that is so superior to the competition? The 200-odd people who think Emacs is a better system must be living in a different world than I am! – Martin J. Osborne Dec 31 '14 at 00:33
4

@Martin: I agree wholeheartedly. I guess people don't realize the value of incremental instantaneous live preview until they use it. And lots of people don't need to LaTeX figures. – Jamie Vicary May 07 '15 at 16:18
2

I've been devotedly using BaKoMa since 2007 and it amazes me that none of the other options appear to have even caught up to the version from 2007. I am about to upgrade to the 2015 version (university insists on having their own active license--won't complain too much) and it's nice to see many of the old quirks have been fixed. I agree the cost shouldn't be an issue for serious researchers: this is orders of magnitude better than the alternatives. It's just hard to get people to pay for something when a free option exists, even if they are so far behind. – Jack Huizenga Aug 25 '15 at 22:33
Sound like LawTeX is a much cheaper option for comparable features. – An Hoa Feb 19 '16 at 17:56
1

LawTeX is basically abandonware, This is the last release that we will make: Until Microsoft repents and makes Visual Studio portable, we will no longer release any app update. Not to mention the "license terms" are really sketchy. At least with BaKoMa you have a real product that has been existing a number of years that is regularly updated. – A Feldman Apr 07 '16 at 22:03
1

BaKoMa allows one to edit the text in the actual Journal format, using any complex class/style. The live view looks completely identical (unlike in LyX) to the publication-quality PDF one obtains when compiling with pdfLaTeX. But in BaKoMa this is updated in real-time, as in Word document. As a long-time LaTeX user with traditional text editors, this looks almost magical. – divenex Sep 25 '19 at 13:57
This sounded so good that i wanted to give it a try. However, the project seems abandoned since 2018. The website is up, but you can't pay/register the software any longer. – Floyd Jan 22 '20 at 07:46
1

From what you can find on their website original author died, so for a moment it was unsupported but supposedly his nephew took ownership to fix the licenses issues. He said though that it "would take him a while to figure out how to maintain the codebase" so you can consider it pretty much abandonware. At this point I would be really much in favor of what some people propose, that is, but the sourcecode of BaKoMa na make it OSS. Unlikely to happen, though. – Mateusz Kubuszok Mar 31 '20 at 11:29

score 22 · Answer 26 · edited Jun 10 '20 at 12:32

Latexian - Discontinued

Available for: Mac
Commercial - $9.99 on App Store

Latexian was made by Taco Software, a company which has now closed. It was available Mac OS X 10.6 or higher (including Mavericks). Limited support is still being provided for those that previously purchased their software.

This is a very lean editing environment at its core, with many features that can extend its capabilities. One very nice feature is an integrated execution environment that updates a live preview window in near-real time with edits. It is perfect for quick, simple projects.

^{Click image to enlarge}

Features (copied from software site)

OS X Lion & Mountain Lion Features

For OS X Lion and Mountain Lion users, Latexian has support for Autosave, Resume, Versions, and Full Screen.

Navigator

Quickly navigate to chapters, sections, and included files using the Navigator. You can also add your own bookmarks to the Navigator by adding a comment to your document starting with the "!" character.

Live Preview

Live Preview allows you to see how your document typesets while you are editing. The PDF preview appears in a split pane and updates automatically.

Code Completion

Latexian includes Code Completion for LaTeX and BibTeX documents. When navigating the completion list, a brief description is shown for the selected item.

Code Folding

Code Folding allows you to collapse segments of text, making it easier to navigate through your text. Latexian identifies chapters and sections in your document and provides disclosure triangles to fold these in one click. Latexian will remember and restore your folds if you don't edit a document externally.

Code Clips

If you ever get tired of copying and pasting frequently used text segments, then Latexian's Code Clips will alleviate your problems. Code Clips allow you to store, manage, and access those text segments more easily. With Code Clips, you can assign keyboard shortcuts (Command + 0-9) to insert a clip into a document. You can also insert clips through Latexian's Code Completion panel.

Spell Checking

Latexian includes syntax-aware spell checking, including spell checking while you type. It ignores your LaTeX commands, and highlights errors in your text content.

Code Coloring

As you edit your document, Latexian colors your text to make it easier to read and navigate. Coloring is customizable, and Latexian supports coloring for LaTeX and BibTeX documents.

Console

Latexian includes an interactive console for presenting the output of the typesetter, and accepting input requested by the typesetter. Error messages are hyperlinked to the document location where the error occurred.

Find & Batch Find

Latexian includes advanced Find functionality for searching individual documents or entire projects. Support for regular expressions is included.

Unfortunately, it seems Taco Software closed shop some time in 2015. — talazem, Jul 28 '15 at 23:42

score 21 · Answer 27 · edited Apr 22 '12 at 21:46

21

WinShell

Available For: Windows
FreeWare

WinShell is a free multilingual integrated development environment (IDE) for LaTeX and TeX. The program includes a text editor, syntax highlighting, project management, spell checking, a table wizard, BibTeX support, Unicode support, different toolbars and user configuration options. It is not a LaTeX system; an additional LaTeX package is required.

^{Click image to enlarge}

edited Apr 22 '12 at 21:46

doncherry

54,637

answered Jul 30 '10 at 05:21

alexandrul

311
2
7

2

Finally, someone mentioned it. I've tried almost all IDEs mentioned thus far, and only WinShell managed to stick, and is now my editor of choice. There are a few handy options that I miss, though (namely, including a fancy symbol from a menu if you've forgotten the name -- the way TexnicCenter does). – Martin Tapankov Aug 19 '10 at 05:47
1

What I found useful in winshell is that it is portable and has unicode support. – fabikw Nov 12 '10 at 16:46

score 16 · Answer 28 · edited Jun 10 '20 at 12:32

16

TeXnicle

Platforms: Mac
License: Free
Languages: English
Unicode: Yes
RTL/bidi: No
% !TEX directives: No
Syntax Highlighting: Yes (configurable)
Code Completion: Yes
Code Folding: Yes
Spell Checking: Yes
SyncTeX: Yes
Built-in Output Viewer: Yes
Project Management: Yes

enter image description here

edited Jun 10 '20 at 12:32

Community

1

answered Nov 02 '13 at 06:34

Werner

603,163

How do you solve the lack of support for Biber, if you do? I need some of its features, mainly Unicode. – Harold Cavendish Jan 03 '14 at 21:47
@HaroldCavendish: I don't have a Mac... consider asking in chat. – Werner Jan 03 '14 at 21:56
Thanks, it was worth it. Should anyone look for the same, all it takes is to go to Preferences –> Typesetting –> Engines, make a duplicate of the desired one (e.g. pdfLaTeX) and redefine the variable BIBTEX by replacing the path to BibTeX with the one pointing to Biber. Thanks to Joseph Wright's suggestion. – Harold Cavendish Jan 03 '14 at 22:37

score 16 · Answer 29 · edited Jun 10 '20 at 12:32

16

Inlage

Available for: Windows
Commercial

Inlage is a great LaTeX IDE for Windows Vista/7. It has a lot of features that make it easy to handle LaTeX. The autocompletion has many commands with icons and descriptions and if you have a tablet pc you can use the Math Input Panel to translate a symbol or an equation to LaTeX.

Main features:

Math Input Panel to LaTeX
Excel/Calc tables to LaTeX
autocompletion
spell checker
docking system
inverse/forward search (SumatraPDF)
code folding

^{Click image to enlarge}

edited Jun 10 '20 at 12:32

Community

1

answered Oct 25 '10 at 22:41

zee

171

Inlage looks great. It is commercial, but might be worth the money. – ipavlic Apr 30 '11 at 17:45
1

I found a inlage a few months ago via this thread and I'm very happy with it. I used it for several papers and now i'm writing my thesis with it. – kventil Aug 24 '11 at 10:22
2

unstable ... inlage 5 ... Personal opinion ... User since an year ... Had to switch to editor ... – Rene Duchamp May 07 '13 at 01:34
1

Inlage 4 is more stable than the newer one. Inlage 4 is for free now, Please download and try it ... – Rene Duchamp Nov 29 '13 at 08:34
It appears that Inlage 4 only works with MikTeX, and not with TeXLive, so it is not usable for me. Otherwise it would have looked quite nice. – hbaderts Aug 17 '15 at 06:51

score 15 · Answer 30 · edited Jun 12 '22 at 15:07

Vim with LaTeX-Box

Platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux and others
License: Open Source Charityware
Compilation: using latexmk (<Leader>ll)
Unicode: Yes
% !TEX directives: No, but has modelines
Syntax Highlighting: Yes, customizable
Code Completion: Yes (using Omni Completion; snippet via additional plugin)
Code Folding: Yes
Spell Checking: Yes
SyncTeX: Yes
Built-in Output Viewer: No
Project Management: additional plugin (e.g. project.tar.gz)
Version Control: additional plugin (e.g. fugitive.vim)

Vim motions important for tex-documents:

{ and } to jump to next or previous empty line (=paragraph jumping)

Extends vim motions and text-objects:

Motion between \begin/\end and \left\right pairs with the % key.
text-objects: Environment objects (e.g., select with "vie" or "vae"), Inline math objects (e.g., select with "vi$" or "va$").

Note: Based on LaTeX-Box plugin is Automatic LATEX Plugin for Vim (ATP) which is a rather fully-featured plugin similar to latex-suite.

Update about project activities as of May 2019

It seems that the development of latex-box and atp (comment) have ceased. The more active projects are vimtex and vim-latex.

VimTex image

The most important aspect of latex editor is overall ease of use. Most editors are same if you know latex basics. The main difference is how good is autocompletion, and whether compilation is automated. If there is a way to sync doc to say google drive, it could be advantage, but can be achieved by using offline google drive. Emacs and vim is for programmers and difficult to learn for others — Vaibhav, Dec 28 '16 at 09:45
Updated the link for ATP in the answer and added a note about which projects look actively maintained. — Hotschke, May 05 '19 at 10:46

score 12 · Answer 31 · edited Jan 30 '21 at 23:00

Geany with GeanyLaTeX

Available for: Windows, Mac, Linux and others
Open Source

Another great editor is Geany. It comes with support for Windows and Linux. Furthermore the software has a plugin for LaTeX. It is maintained by one of the main developers. The plugin has a wizard for new LaTeX documents, autocompletion, you can easily insert environments and it is well documented. Unfortunately, its author seems to be no longer interested in maintaining it.

score 11 · Answer 32 · edited Jun 10 '20 at 12:32

11

Vim with Snipmate plugin and Rubber

Available for: Windows, Mac, Linux and others
Open Source

I used to use Vim-Latex, but I found it too heavy-weight and rigid. Snipmate provides a subset of the functionality, but it is easier to customize and works for any programming language.

edited Jun 10 '20 at 12:32

Community

1

answered Nov 14 '10 at 17:06

Roberto Bonvallet

1,703

score 10 · Answer 33 · answered Feb 10 '15 at 14:54

Papeeria

Online LaTeX editor with real-time collaboration, integrated gnuplot, templates and project versioning

Platforms: Web browser: Windows, Linux, Mac OSX, iOS, Android
License: Free plan available, paid plan starts from $5/month
Languages: en
Unicode: Yes
Syntax Highlighting: Yes, not customizable
Code Completion: Yes, not customizable
Code Folding: Yes
Spell Checking: Yes
SyncTeX: Yes
Built-in Output Viewer: Yes, supports PDF
Project Management: Yes
Autosave: Yes

Free plan includes unlimited number of collaborators and public projects and one private project.

score 10 · Answer 34 · edited Jun 01 '11 at 00:07

10

Emacs with WhizzyTeX

Available for: Linux, Unix-based systems
Open Source

I just recently discovered WhizzyTeX for Emacs. It gives you a real-time preview of your document, as you type. It can also show you where your cursor is with respect to the document.

It works with everything that I've thrown at it: Math, tipa, synttree, TikZ, etc. The only problem I've encountered so far is that TikZ nodes with text get garbled together.

For Ubuntu/Debian users:

sudo apt-get install advi whizzytex
Start Emacs
M-x whizzytex-mode

edited Jun 01 '11 at 00:07

Caramdir

89,023
26
255
291

answered Aug 04 '10 at 10:35

Ryan Fox

276

On windows I use the specially prepared emacs from: http://vgoulet.act.ulaval.ca/en/emacs/windows/ – kjetil b halvorsen Sep 21 '16 at 09:27

score 9 · Answer 35 · edited Feb 04 '14 at 12:46

RTextDoc

Platforms: Windows, Mac OS, Linux (written in Java)
License: Commercial with free demo version
Languages: en, 14 other
Syntax Highlighting: Yes
Code Folding: Yes
Spell Checking: Yes (20 languages)
Grammar Checking: Yes (14 languages)
Built-in Output Viewer: Yes
Section structure viewer: Yes

This editor has a few features that can make it attractive: instant grammar checker, word look-up with more than 40 dictionaries and built-in graphics program based on PStricks. It also supports AsciiDOC syntax to write documents. Other features include:

LaTeX → HTML converter
HTML → LaTeX converter
LaTeX → MathML/XML converter
WYSIWYG Equation Editor and Bibliography database editor

score 9 · Answer 36 · edited Jun 10 '20 at 12:32

9

Scribo

Available for: Mac
Open Source

If you are looking for a beautifully designed LaTeX editor for Mac, you should try Scribo.
Although it's still in beta, it has a beautiful interface with a live outline of your document and a split-view. I am really anxious to see what it will become.

Also, I personally use TextMate and the LaTeX bundle for typesetting small files.

edited Jun 10 '20 at 12:32

Community

1

answered Nov 12 '10 at 13:46

Lou

191

Their website is down... – Peater de Xel May 30 '13 at 14:31
2

Scribo is defunct. Please remove the link to their page, the site is now a malware hole. – Ryder Dec 13 '15 at 10:00

Stephen · Answer 37 · 2023-06-11T15:00:40.587

8

Scientific WorkPlace

Was available for: Windows
Commercial

Platforms: Microsoft Windows® NT 4.0, or Windows® 98, Me, 2000, XP, Vista, Windows® 7 or later or Apple Macintosh® running an emulator program such as Virtual PC™, Parallels, or the free Virtual Box running a version of Windows® listed above

License: was commercial, US$810.00

Spell Checking: could be purchased separately

It had MuPAD as built-in computer algebra system, is described here.

The company behind Scientific Workplace, MacKichan Software, Inc., went out of business July 1, 2021. The details are reported in the item on Scientific Word, q.v.

(barbara beaton via comment)

edited Jun 11 '23 at 15:00

answered Aug 27 '11 at 14:42

Stephen

14,890

The company behind Scientific Workplace, MacKichan Software, Inc., went out of business July 1, 2021. The details are reported in the item on Scientific Word, q.v. – barbara beeton May 23 '23 at 15:56
@barbarabeeton Thank you, added the information into the answer. – Stephen Jun 11 '23 at 15:01

arober11 · Answer 38 · 2015-10-25T11:19:02.010

8

TechWriter

Platforms: RISC OS
License: Commercial
Languages: en/de
Unicode: ???
RTL/bidirectional support: Yes
% !TeX directives: No
Syntax highlighting: No
Code completion: No
Code folding: No
Spell checking: Yes
SyncTeX: No
Built-in output viewer: Yes (WYSIWYG)
Project management: ???

WYSIWYG Editing
Multi language spell check: {en, es, it, pt, fr, de, nl, no, da, fi, se, is}
LaTex export
PDF export
HTML + CSS export
Postscript export
Word (.doc / .docx) import / export
ODT import
RTF import
CSV import
Key shortcuts
Smart indexing / references / footnotes
image - drag and drop / placement
auto save

edited Oct 25 '15 at 11:19

answered Oct 25 '15 at 08:13

arober11

101

@JosephWright, done, as RISC OS is still around, though niche it may be of interest, and there must be some demand as it's still being developed, and on sale. I found it better than anything else around when it was released 23+ years back, and is still better than many of the current offerings. – arober11 Oct 25 '15 at 08:32

score 8 · Answer 39 · edited Apr 27 '21 at 11:49

TeXiFy-IDEA

TeXiFy-IDEA is a plugin for Jetbrains IDEs like IntelliJ and PyCharm (actively maintained).

GitHub: https://github.com/Hannah-Sten/TeXiFy-IDEA

JetBrains Plugin Repository: https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/9473-texify-idea/

List of features and documentation: https://github.com/Hannah-Sten/TeXiFy-IDEA/wiki/Features

Platforms: Windows, macOS and Linux
License: TeXiFy-IDEA is MIT licensed, IntelliJ Community is licensed under Apache-2.0 and free for commercial use
Languages: English
Unicode: Yes, uses multi-stage educated guessing for the file encoding
RTL/bidirectional support: Yes, can automatically detect content-based
% !TeX directives: Yes
Syntax highlighting: Yes, customisable
Code completion: Yes, including user-defined commands and smart completion based on user behaviour
Code folding: Yes
Spell checking: Yes, as well as grammar checking using the Grazie plugin
SyncTeX: Yes
Built-in output viewer: Yes, plus support for Evince, SumatraPDF, Skim, Okular, and Zathura
Project management: Yes

Other features:

Autocomplete of labels, (custom defined) commands and environments
Writer ergonomics - writing LaTeX made less cumbersome
Compiler support for pdfLaTeX, LuaTeX, Latexmk, texliveonfly, XeLaTeX, bibtex, and biber
Inspections. Intentions. And heaps more inspections.
Refactorings - extract long sections/chapters to new files and automatically \input them.
Full BibTeX support
Formatter for LaTeX and BibTeX
Structure view for LaTeX and BibTeX with filters
Code folding for imports, sections, and environments
SumatraPDF support with forward and backward search
Unicode math preview
Equation preview
Gutter icons for quick compilation and file includes
Fancy icons that fit in with the IntelliJ style
Brace matching
Word counting tool
File templates for .tex, .sty, .cls and .bib files
Automagically import packages of common commands
Go to declaration of labels, jump to \include'd documents, jump to bibliography entries.
Shortcuts for styling text
Line commenter
Support for user-created document classes and packages
Toggle star action

As it stands, this doesn't fit the template: could it be edited to match up? (We've got a template as comparing editors only works if you ask the same questions!) — Joseph Wright, Jan 24 '20 at 12:47
Hey @JosephWright - is https://tex.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3254/102207 the right template to match? — Adam Williams, Jan 24 '20 at 18:05

score 7 · Answer 40 · answered Nov 04 '13 at 11:50

Verbosus (a.k.a VerbTeX for Android/iOS/Windows 8)

Platforms: Android, iOS, Windows 8 (modern UI), Browser
License: Free (limited version), Paid (full version)
Languages: en (Android/iOS/Windows 8/Browser), de (Android/Browser), fr (Browser)
Unicode: Yes
Syntax highlighting: Yes
Code completion: Yes (Browser), No (Android/iOS/Windows 8)
Code folding: No
Spell checking: Yes (Android/iOS/Windows 8/Browser: Depending on your preferences)
SyncTeX: No
Built-in output viewer: Yes (Browser: if you use a browser like Chrome which has an integrated viewer), No (Android/iOS/Windows 8)
Project management: Yes
Collaboration: Yes (Android/Browser), No (iOS/Windows 8)

Verbosus has the advantage that it uses an up-to-date TeX distribution. — CarLaTeX, Feb 10 '17 at 19:08

score 7 · Answer 41 · edited Jan 06 '22 at 22:36

Scientific Word

Platforms: Windows
License: Commercial

Same as Scientific WorkPlace, but without the computer algebra system, and now for free.

The company behind this software is MacKichan Software, Inc., and went out of business on July 1, 2021 (http://www.mackichan.com/index.html?products/sw.html~mainFrame):

Sales have ceased for Scientific WorkPlace, Scientific Word, and Scientific Notebook

MacKichan Software, Inc., after providing word processing software for those who speak the language of mathematics for forty years (under several names), closed its doors on June 30, 2021. This marks the end of sales and support for the MacKichan Software products.

All owners of Scientific WorkPlace, Scientific Word, or Scientific Notebook should have a serial number that was included in their purchase. This number is also included in the license file for your installation as the last line in the file. If you need to install your software on a new or different computer, you will need to re-activate the software on that computer using that serial number. The software can be activated as before, using the Help/Activate menu item. This contacts the MacKichan Software licensing server, which we will keep running for at least two years.

Thirty-day trials of all of our products are discontinued. Trial serial numbers will no longer work to activate the software.

Sites with permanent site licenses will, of course, be free to use Scientific WorkPlace, Scientific Word, and/or Scientific Notebook as long as they like. Those sites that have paid for maintenance with home-use satellite licenses can continue, but will be unable to create new satellite licenses after their maintenance agreement expires.

We expect to make Scientific Word an open source product eventually. Since both Scientific WorkPlace and Scientific Notebook contain the proprietary computer algebra system MuPAD, they cannot be made open source. When the open source project for Scientific Word is established, an announcement will be made here.

We hope to make version 5.5 of Scientific Word available in the future. It currently contains several components that are licensed and not owned by MacKichan Software. These components need to be removed, and our intention is then to make Scientific Word version 5.5 open source.

Barry MacKichan President MacKichan Software, Inc.

July 1, 2021

The latest released version of these products is 6.1.2. To update your program to the latest release, click here. The same page also contains links to the installers for version 5.5 and the manuals for versions 5.5 and 6.

@user202729: Yes, thanks for pointing this out. I updated my answer accordingly. — Stephen, Oct 30 '21 at 18:14

score 6 · Answer 42 · answered Feb 23 '13 at 21:07

Scribes

Available for: Linux
Free & Open source
Unicode: Yes
RTL/BiDi: Yes
Custom BG/syntax highlighting: Yes (GTK)
Best feature: customizable templates/snippets (great for quick insertion of figure/table/listing environments, inserting non-ASCII characters for XeTeX users, etc)

screenshot of LaTeX editing with Scribes

score 5 · Answer 43 · edited Jun 10 '20 at 12:32

Compositor

Platforms: Mac OS 10.11+
License: US$ 20
Languages: en
Unicode: Yes
RTL/bidi: ?
% !TEX directives: ?
Syntax Highlighting: ?
Code Completion: ?
Code Folding: ?
Spell Checking: ?
SyncTeX: ?
Built-in Output Viewer: Yes, supports PDF, DVI
Project Management: ?
Autosave: Yes
Line Spacing: Yes

Compositor is a WYSIWYG LaTeX editor for Mac.

The DVI Viewer Is The New Editor

In a traditional LaTeX workflow, you would edit the LaTeX source in a text editor, compile the document every now and then, and check the effects of your changes in the DVI viewer.

In Compositor, the DVI viewer is the document editor — you type directly in the rendered document, and every keystroke is immediately reflected. The source editing and compilation steps are completely eliminated from the workflow.

This not just gives you immediate visual feedback, it should also save you quite some time previously spent on compilation runs.

Source Editing When You Need It

There will be situations where you want direct access to the underlying LaTeX source.

Pressing Ctrl+S will open an inline source editor showing the LaTeX source behind the document region you're currently working on (often this will be the current paragraph).

This should allow for a smooth migration experience to this new paradigm, even with commands or environments for which there is no dedicated graphical inspector (yet).

Automatic Package Installation

If your document uses LaTeX packages not bundled with the app, they are automatically downloaded from CTAN.

And if you are using packages not available on CTAN, you can still provide them to the app easily.

Video of functionality

The website says "Sorry, Compositor is no longer available for purchase." — Calvin Khor, Feb 15 '22 at 02:20

score 4 · Answer 44 · edited Aug 01 '15 at 04:32

DMelt

Platforms: All Java enabled platforms (Window, Linux, Mac, Sun)
License: Free
Languages: en
Unicode: Yes
Syntax highlighting: Yes
Code completion: Only for macros to generate images
Code folding: No
Spell checking: Yes (Using Open-office dictionaries)
SyncTeX: Yes
Built-in output viewer: Configurable using scripts
Additional features to edit LaTeX files: Integrated structure view, LaTeX tool to insert latex commands, BibTex manager.

This IDE goes much beyond editing LaTeX files. It is an environment for scientific computation, data analysis and data visualization. You can plot functions, perform a data-analysis with histograms and arrays, do data mining, statistical calculations. Symbolic mathematical calculations are also supported. A lot of tools for matrix calculations. Data can be shown in 2D and 3D. SCaVis can generate vector-graphics images that can be inserted to the LaTeX documents. The program is written in Java.

SCaVis IDE to edit LateX files

Are you sure about the license here? According to http://jwork.org/scavis/features, it's 'free as in beer' for academics but not GPL. — Joseph Wright, Feb 01 '14 at 15:58
Can we get a screenshot that doesn't promote so many antipatterns? — Sean Allred, Aug 01 '15 at 05:08

score 4 · Answer 45 · edited Jun 10 '20 at 12:32

Archimedes

Available for: Mac OS X
Commercial - $4.99 on Mac App Store

Archimedes is a LaTeX and Markdown editor designed from the ground-up for Mac OS X. It does not require an external TeX installation and includes innovative features like Magic Type, which allows users to insert mathematical symbols simply by drawing them on their MacBook's trackpad or Magic Trackpad.

Features (copied from the website):

Markdown Editing

At its core, Archimedes is a fully-featured plain text and Markdown editor. It includes a fast syntax highlighter and provides convenient keyboard shortcuts for common actions, such as inserting images and links. With complete support for Markdown, Archimedes makes formatting and structuring documents elegant and easy.

Math Mode + Autocomplete

In Math Mode, Archimedes lets you write mathematics in a subset of LaTeX. Just enter $$ to get started. Over 700 intuitive commands, such as \sqrt{a^2 + b^2}, help you produce stunning mathematical output. Archimedes even autocompletes commands and intelligently matches closing braces, brackets, and parenthesis as you type.

Magic Type

Just getting started with LaTeX? Don't know the code for the asymptotically equal symbol? Use your MacBook's trackpad or Magic Trackpad to draw it! Archimedes will recognize the symbol and insert the corresponding code for you.

Live Preview

As you work, a beautifully-typeset live preview of your document is always visible. You can even switch between horizontal or vertical orientation and select a custom theme.

Math Library

Browse the math library to see all available LaTeX commands and their previews in one place.

Macros

Archimedes lets you define macros -- or custom commands -- for the expressions you work with the most. Macros show up in autocompletion results right alongside built-in completions.

Navigator

Working on a long document? Use the Navigator to pull up a table of contents and quickly jump between sections.

Sharing

Share your work with the rest of the world via email, iMessage or AirDrop. Or export a PDF or HTML document to disk.

Hello! Do you think you could try to make this answer comply with the template defined in the following link? It would be helpful for people trying to find what suits them the best. http://meta.tex.stackexchange.com/a/3254/11002 — yo', Nov 24 '14 at 22:40
In addition to what @tohecz says, I wonder about the 'doesn't require a TeX system' part. Is this really a (La)TeX editor, or is it some form of Markdown-like parsing which recognises just a subset of LaTeX-like math mode commands (similar to MathJax)? The screenshot given doesn't really look like TeX input, for example. — Joseph Wright, Nov 25 '14 at 08:27
@JosephWright I haven't realized that at the first sight, but it really looks like wiki language. — yo', Nov 25 '14 at 09:12

score 4 · Answer 46 · edited Sep 04 '16 at 09:40

4

Open LaTeX Studio

Platforms: Windows, Linux
License: Open source/free
Syntax Highlighting: Yes
Code Completion: Yes
Spell Checking: Yes
Built-in Output Viewer: Yes

Other pros:

Remote collaboration through DropBox
Document templates

edited Sep 04 '16 at 09:40

Sebastian Brudzinski

101

answered Sep 04 '15 at 20:27

Werner

603,163

score 4 · Answer 47 · answered Dec 07 '15 at 09:25

jEdit

Platforms: Windows XP/Vista/7/8, OS X, Linux (Slackware, Debian). Should work on any platform with a Java VM.
License: GPL
Languages: en, cz de, fr, ja, ru, zh
Unicode: Yes
RTL/bidi: No
% !TEX directives: No
Syntax Highlighting: Yes, regex-based (including .bib)
Code Completion: Via plugin
Code Folding: Yes
Spell Checking: Via plugin or macro (using Aspell either way)
SyncTeX: No
Built-in Output Viewer: No
Project Management: No
Autosave: Yes

Screenshot of jEdit on Windows (font is 'hack'): Linux looks very similar:

On Windows and Linux, I use jEdit. TeX support for command insertion, compilation, Aspell etc. is provided via macros, though I tend to use the command line for compilation anyway.

I have a strong preference for cross-platform, general-purpose tools, so choose a text editor rather than a TeX-specific IDE.

score 3 · Answer 48 · answered Nov 04 '13 at 12:05

I tend to use jove "Jonathon's Own Version of Emacs" (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JOVE for history, downloads at ftp://ftp.cs.toronto.edu/cs/ftp/pub/hugh/jove-dev/) which gives a very compact emacs-like editor for Windows, without the vast overhead of an emacs environment.

I use a secondary cmd window to invoke texify (MikTeX), though I presume jove could set up a macro to do it. In the image below, my editing window is upper left, the cmd window is lower left and the DVI (or PDF) window is on the right.

enter image description here

http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/339/latex-editors-ides/142195#comment318627_141039 — texenthusiast, Nov 04 '13 at 16:12

score 2 · Answer 49 · answered Jan 29 '15 at 12:26

2

TeXpen

http://sf.net/p/texpen

Linux/Win/Mac

Auto-completion
Highlighting
Themes
One-Click compiling
Realtime Equation preview
Built-in PDF preview
... ...

answered Jan 29 '15 at 12:26

Piwaldo

1

Welcome to TeX.SX! You can have a look at our starter guide to familiarize yourself further with our format. There is a template for the answer to this thread, could you please try to make this post based on the template? It'll be easier for people to get the necessary information. – yo' Jan 29 '15 at 12:54

score 1 · Answer 50 · answered Oct 15 '16 at 01:13

Winefish

Platforms: Linux
License: GPL
Unicode: Yes
RTL/bidi: ?
% !TEX directives: ?
Syntax Highlighting: Customizable
Code Completion: Yes
Code Folding: No
Spell Checking: Yes
SyncTeX: No
Built-in Output Viewer: No
Project Management: Yes
Autosave: ?
Line Spacing: ?

A LaTeX Editor for Experienced Users.

score 1 · Answer 51 · edited Apr 16 '19 at 10:05

IntelliJ IDEA with LaTeX plugin (unmaintained)

Platforms: Linux, Windows, MacOSX
License: MIT
Unicode: Yes
RTL/bidi: No (until IDEA-57251 is solved)
% !TEX directives: No
Syntax Highlighting: Yes
Code Completion: No
Code Folding: No
Spell Checking: Yes - with the RedPen plugin
SyncTeX: Yes (as soon as IDEA-159739) is solved)
Built-in Output Viewer: No
Project Management: Yes
Autosave: Yes
Line Spacing: Yes

An IntelliJ plugin joining the features of IntelliJ with LaTeX.

score 1 · Answer 52 · answered Mar 18 '17 at 07:15

Texiteasy is a great latex editor that is not on this list.

http://texiteasy.com/

It allows easy macro support. From the website, other features are:

Other Features

Syntax coloration
Command completion (with commands defined in the source, \ref your \label, \cite your bibitem and bibfile)
Integrated pdf viewer (auto sync during scrolling, reverse sync with Ctrl+Click on the pdf)
Spell checker
Hide auxilary files
Search with regex
Quickly open associted files (input, bibliography)
Autodetect the master file (if it is open)
Restore last session
Configure multiple builders
Configure keybinding and themes
Split the editor in two parts

score 1 · Answer 53 · answered Apr 04 '17 at 12:47

Reading TUGboat, Volume 37 (2016), No. 3 275 I saw that there is LaTeX Base, with the following features:

live, compile-as-you-type document preview,
one-click document publishing and sharing,
offline mode,
integrations with file storage services like Google Drive and Dropbox,
syntax highlighting,
and (the very interesting) familiar keyboard shortcuts for Vim and Emacs users.

Unfortunately, if I have understood well, only the online editor for short documents is free.

Fran · Answer 54 · 2019-07-23T10:54:13.510

Rstudio Desktop

This is text editor mainly focused in help with the R statistical language, but allow edit and compile .tex files, and more importantly, Sweave/knitr (.Rnw), markdown (.md) and Rmarkdown (.Rmd), that can be compiled as LaTeX file.

Assistance to write LaTeX code is limited to a few basic commands ({\section}, etc.) in .tex files and absent in other files, but in Rmarkdown can show previews of math environments, preview of images included with Rmarkdown (e.g.: ![caption](image.jpg)) and a very useful clickable outline pane for fond documents. This allow to write very easily simple LateX files, but also complex files since you can also include any LaTeX command or environment (e.g. \begin{figure}...\begin{figure}) in Rmarkdown text, as well as R code chunks, surpassing the limitations of the three languages. Write markdown+LateX-R s without doubt for me the major advantage of this editor, so, for instance, you can write some as:

This is *nearly* a \TeX\ `r pi`  document.

And obtain a PDF produced in pdflatex with:

This is nearly a TEX 3.1415927 document.

"Nearly" because R do not supply the pi constant with enough digits for this example, but that ~~snippet~~ complete document show that is using markdown code (in *nearly*), TeX code (in \TeX\) and R code (in r pi).

Platforms: Linux (Debian,Ubuntu,Fedora,OpenSUSE), Windows, Mac OS X.
License: AGPL v3
Unicode: Yes
Syntax highlighting: Yes
Spell checking: Yes (but not live spellcheck)
Built-in output viewer: Yes
Project management: Yes

John Targaryen · Answer 55 · 2021-08-02T02:11:17.797

Auto-Latex Equations add-on for Google Docs

Note: Provides LaTeX equations inside Google Docs, not a full LaTeX document editor
Platforms: Browser-based
License: Free
Languages: All due to Google Docs integration
Version Control: Yes, auto-saves all past versions with revision history

For all math equations typeset in MathJax/LaTeX, the Auto-Latex Equations add-on for Google Docs is free and works at a high quality. By replacing all your equations with images of the high-quality equation, it's mobile-viewable and fully compatible with Google Docs image tools.

Equations in delimiters can be rendered in super high quality at whatever time you like by rendering all the equations in your document. If you mess up, you can always undo one (or all), edit it, then re-render.

You can get it for free at the Google Docs add-ons store.

score 0 · Answer 56 · answered Feb 24 '23 at 21:01

0

Texifier

Another proposal of editor currently only, actually, for the MAC OS version is available is named Texifier: https://www.texifier.com/mac

answered Feb 24 '23 at 21:01

Sebastiano

54,118

List of editors

56 Answers56

Emacs with AUCTeX — emacs auctex

TeXstudio — texstudio

(formerly TexMakerX)

Vim with vim-latex aka LaTeX-suite — vim vim-latex

Features

VIM

LaTeX-Suite

Texmaker — texmaker

TeXworks — texworks

Sublime Text with LaTeXTools plugin

Kile — kile

Overleaf (v2) - Online LaTeX editor in your web browser.

TeXnicCenter — texniccenter

WinEdt — winedt

Visual Studio Code with LaTeX-Workshop (on GitHub)

Texifier — texpad

Both

OSX

iOS

Atom with latex, latex-plus, or latextools packages

Vim with vimtex — vim

gedit with the gedit-LaTeX-plugin

TextMate

GNOME LaTeX (previously named LaTeXila)

BaKoMa TeX Word — bakoma

Latexian - Discontinued

Features (copied from software site)

OS X Lion & Mountain Lion Features

Navigator

Live Preview

Code Completion

Code Folding

Code Clips

Spell Checking

Code Coloring

Console

Find & Batch Find

Vim with LaTeX-Box

Vim motions important for tex-documents:

Extends vim motions and text-objects:

Update about project activities as of May 2019

VimTex image

Geany with GeanyLaTeX

Vim with Snipmate plugin and Rubber

Emacs with WhizzyTeX

Scribo

Scientific WorkPlace

Verbosus (a.k.a VerbTeX for Android/iOS/Windows 8)

The DVI Viewer Is The New Editor

Source Editing When You Need It

Automatic Package Installation

Markdown Editing

Math Mode + Autocomplete

Magic Type

Live Preview

Math Library

Macros

Navigator

Sharing

IntelliJ IDEA with LaTeX plugin (unmaintained)

Auto-Latex Equations add-on for Google Docs

Linked

Related

Atom with `latex`, `latex-plus`, or `latextools` packages