Let’s polish the Editors/IDEs question

Question

Our question LaTeX Editors/IDEs is very popular, with close to 35k views as of Feb ’13. However, the answers vary a lot in terms of quality and the kinds of information they provide, which makes comparison harder than it would have to be. So I thought it might be nice to standardize the information available about every editor. Here’s what I’d propose to do:

• Compile a list of features, which will be present in every editor’s answer (Unicode, RTL support, platforms, ...). This will pretty much result in standard answer template.
• Create a sample document (~40 lines max) to take screen shots of in each editor, so the screen shots will be really comparable.
• Have users here “sign up” for editors, i.e. one or a few users will be “responsible” for a specific editor that they are experienced in using. If the editor receives major updates, it’d be great if they could also update the answer accordingly.

Each of these should be one CW answer here, I guess, which I’ll create; discussions can take place in the respective comments.

Sometimes, we get questions like “Which LaTeX editor can make fried eggs?” – in these cases, we could just create a call for action here (another answer as a to-do-list probably) and have the editor caretakers add the feature “Make fried eggs” to their respective editor’s answer. All the information neatly collected in one place.

There is, of course, the great Wikipedia article Comparison of TeX editors, and we should try to avoid just duplicating that here. Instead, let’s take advantage of our format: screen shots are definitely a plus; we can me a little more subjective than Wikipedia; we can add a few words to a bare yes or no, if necessary; and, while I don’t know how up-to-date that article is, it might be easier for us to stay up-to-date.

Important: Let’s wait with updating the actual answers until we’ve pretty much sorted everything out here.

Feel free to edit all answers without prior discussion. I think most things won’t be very controversial, since it’s usually not an either-or situation. If the feature list or sample document get too extensive, we can always try to boil them down later.

Note Any discussion comments that get 'actioned' will be removed periodically so the key points stay clear.

Answer 1

Editor Sign Up List

• Texmaker: doncherry (Win7), hpesoj626 (linux). Updated 2013-02-28
• TeXworks: Joseph Wright, tohecz (linux). Updated 2013-03-09
• TeXnicCenter: Werner, percusse. Updated 2013-03-15
• TeXStudio: hpesoj626 (linux). Updated 2013-03-09
• TeXShop: Alan Munn
• Vim: Psirus. Updated 2013-03-09
• Emacs: Charles Stewart (OSX, linux), Tyler Smith. Updated 2013-03-09
• WinEdt: Joseph Wright (former user so have some idea!). Updated 2013-03-16

Please add yourself with your favorite editor(s) here. In order to keep the “responsibility” somewhat concentrated, I’d say no more than three people per editor.

Editors with a score of at least 25 still looking for someone – freelancers welcome!

• Kile
• LyX

Answer 2

Feature List / Answer Template

_{between the two double rules}

---

---

TeX Editor Name — our-tag-for-this-editor-if-it-exists

• Platforms: Windows XP/Vista/7/8, OS X 10.?, Linux
• License: License XYZ, US$ 20
• Languages: de, en, fr, ...
• Unicode: Yes
• RTL/bidi: Yes
• % !TEX directives: 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, DVI
• Project Management: Yes (which?)
• Autosave: Yes
• Line Spacing: Yes

Description, if necessary.

If there are some specific features to showcase, we could have more screen shots here. Try to make all alt texts of the pictures descriptive; we can see them on mouseover.

At the end, we could have personal statements with the name of the user in front and quotation marks (?), a bit like a mini-review, maintaining a separation between feature descriptions and more subjective statements, but allowing to reuse most of the existing material in the answers:
doncherry: “This is my favorite editor and I’ve been using it since 1978 because it was the only one with Tengwar support back then.”

---

---

Explanation of features, if necessary

• License: I’m not sure if that’s the best way of putting that information [doncherry]
• RTL = right to left; bidi = bidirectional.
• Code Folding: Can 'roll up' sections into just the heading (also called 'outline')
• % !TEX directives: See When and why should I use % !TEX TS-program and % !TEX encoding?
• Project Management: Would it be good to have more than just yes/no here?

Answer 3

Sample Document For Screen Shots

named foo-bar.tex

% A comment: here we use a standard class
\documentclass{report}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\begin{document}
\chapter{Hello World}
Inline math mode: $\int_{0}^{2\pi}\sin x\,dx$.
Display math mode: \[\int_{0}^{2\pi}\sin x\,dx\]
Something \verb|verbatim here with $|\\[2em]
\section{Hi There, John}
\emph{Baz} \textti{a typo in a macro}
\begin{tabular}{ccc}
  Foo & Bar & Baz \\\hline
  1   & 2   & 3   \\
  4   & 5   & 6   \\
\end{tabular}
and then a list with cross references and citations
\begin{enumerate}
   \item \label{it:first} This is an item with a citation \cite{dummy}.
   \item This item has a reference to the previous item, namely \ref{it:first} and should be deliberately longer than 80 characters.
\end{enumerate}
\end{document}

---

Take screen shots preferably with the editor’s default settings, i.e. what users would see immediately after installation. Include the (pdf) preview, if available, and wherever the error about \textti would be displayed. Make the picture a link to itself so we can click to enlarge:

[![Texmaker sample document screen shot][1]][1]

Answer 4

To-Do List

• go ahead and edit your editor’s answer!
• still looking for volunteers for some editors!

---

General Questions

• Keep the title as it is? LaTeX Editors/IDEs
• Edit the question body?
• Voting will probably just keep sort-of reflecting the relative popularity of the respective editor, and perhaps also the convincingness of the answer? (That’s my guess for what it is right now.)

(This will be the accepted answer as soon as I can self-accept it.)

Answer 5

I know it was stated by the OP that the Wikipedia article shouldn't be replicated, but I think perhaps that it should (at least to some extent) for the reasons that follow:

1. I recall when I looked at the Wikipedia page when I was first was learning how to use LaTeX, it was extremely messy and difficult to read on a smaller monitor. It may be cleaner that checkmarks be used instead (like on certain product pages on amazon). This also makes it easier for the viewer to compare instead of scrolling up and down when comparing between two different editors.
2. The one on TSE could be restricted to the more popular ones, i.e. the ones that have already been suggested = the ones that people actually use. The Wikipedia article includes far too many options and is certainly overwhelming for those just learning LaTeX.

These are just some thoughts that came across my mind after I found the popular post.

If this is viable, perhaps a pros and cons list of each could be added instead?

Answer 6

I stumbled upon the following choices of the few FOSS editors that are targetted at live preview of TikZ. Should they be put in a section of their own? Any suggestions on how can this be handled?

• tikzit (not in answer) - seems highly feature rich from its website
• qktikz (in answer already)
• tikzedt
  not in answer, was shared as more feature rich alternative to qtikz in a comment on "TeX reference manuals"
• gummy (in answer already)