Hello Everyone,
I'm wondering if anybody can recommend software for editing LaTeX that
would provide more immediate feedback than the old fashioned method of
editing the file in a text editor, processing, viewing in the output
(dvi, pdf, ps, whatever), finding mistakes in the output, looking for
mistakes in the text file, correcting mistakes in the text file,
processing... lather rinse repeat.
There are three problems that I have when typing in LaTeX
(1) Despite years of experience writing in LaTeX, I still frequently
make basic mistakes (like typing _\pi/2 when I mean to type _{\pi/
2}).
(2) Sometimes, it is difficult to find the right choice of words and
notation to express what I want to say, so I end up make frequent
edits to one sentence until I get something I'm satisfied with. This
means editing, processing, reading, edit processing, reading, over and
over again.
(3) When I'm trying to make presentation slides, using a package like
beamer, good spacing is of utmost importance, but it nearly impossible
to know how well things are going to be spaced from the LaTeX code
alone. So I end up spending a lot of time tweaking, adjusting,
reprocessing until things look just right (or until they don't but
I've spent long enough on it that I can't afford to care anymore.)
These things are tolerable in small doses, but I've become
increasingly frustrated with the process, and often feel like I'm
wasting a lot of time.
In all three of these cases, being able to see at least an
approximation to the output of my code would be very helpful. I'd
like to be able to type in LaTeX, but to see the output right away, or
shortly after (1-2 seconds).
If such a program were feasible and I were designing it myself, the
screen would be divided into two frames, with the one showing the
output and the other showing the LaTeX input (it would somewhat
resemble Word Perfect when using the "reveal codes" feature -- to
those who are familiar with reveal codes, I have often likened typing
LaTeX to typing in reveal codes full time).
I recognize that what I'm asking may be a very tall order, once you
start taking packages and custom definitions into account, and I can
think of a few other things that might make it complicated.
Nevertheless, I'm aware of some software whose implementation is
based, at least in part, on LaTeX.
Here are the ones I'm aware of.
(1) LyX. It seems to be the most popular. I downloaded it and tried
it out, but couldn't get it to behave how I wanted. In particular, I
couldn't figure out how to type in LaTeX and see the output. I
certainly couldn't figure out if it was even possible to see both LyX
output and LaTeX input at the same time. I know LyX has a wysiwim
rather than wysiwig approach, so I wouldn't get the exact output.
With this in mind, though, the program still didn't perform in a way
that was satisfactory to me.
Also, when I tried to load one of my LaTeX files into LyX it didn't
seem to know what to do with a lot of the commands, especially
environments.
LyX is free, and you get what you pay for. I'm willing to spend
money, which brings us to the next options.
(2) Scientific Workplace/Word/Notebook by MacKichan Software. Long
ago, near the end of an undergraduate summer research project I used
scientific notebook, within the 30-day shareware term, to record my
results because learning enough LaTeX would have taken too long.
Underlying the Scientific Notebook documents was LaTeX code, but when
I tried to process it outside of Notebook, it didn't work. Maybe the
file could be tweaked so that it would run on the various LaTeX
distributions (and in particular MiKTeX), but I don't want to have to
bother with that for every document. Also, being able to type in
LaTeX is not an available feature of Notebook.
The company's website claims that you can typeset in LaTeX in both
Scientific Workplace and Scientific Word, which I take to mean that I
can type in LaTeX, which will be converted to math notation as I
type. But both of these programs are ridiculously expensive if I'm
paying for them out of my own pocket. I even find it hard to believe
that a university would pony up the dough to pay for either of these
programs.
(3) Microsoft Word. The equation editor in Word is a lot better than
it used to be, but the input is LaTeX-like and not LaTeX. For
example, LaTeX \lim is lim in Equation Editor, and the equation editor
uses round brackets where LaTeX would use curly braces. Also, the end
result is not a LaTeX document.
There are also add-ons/plug-ins to Word. I haven't used these, but I
suspect that I would not have a LaTeX file once I'm done, but a word
file whose equations were composed in LaTeX and converted into a
Microsoft format, as if I had learned Word's equation editor syntax
and typed them in that way.
(4) BaKoMa Tex Word. It sounds like this program does what I want.
It even includes support for slides. On the other hand, it seems very
resource intensive, with a minimum of 1 GHz, and 2 GHz recommended (I
have a 1.6 Core 2 Duo). Microsoft Word doesn't have a processor freak-
out when I use its equation editor, so I don't think a program needs
to be this resource intensive. Also, the program doesn't look very
professional (too many bright colours. It looks like it was designed
to appeal to small children). For these two reasons I am a bit
suspicious (which is why I haven't even tried to download it and test
it).
(\end enumerate ...)
Those are my options as far as I know. I would appreciate any
feedback regarding these programs or any others that I don't know
about and thus didn't mention here, commercial or otherwise. Did I
miss something with LyX? Are they worth the money, safe to download,
etc. etc. Do they support custom commands, environments, additional
packages, and whatnot?
At a minimum, I'd like to be able to type in LaTeX and see
approximately what the processed code would look like. Some way of
coping with custom commands etc. would be nice too (even if they are
ignored, as happens with unknown html tags). Ideally, I would be able
to see the code and the output at the same time, and the custom
commands and whatnot would be interpreted in or close to real time.
If not, I could live with it.
If there exists a round-up on the internet of all the best LaTeX
oriented software with some sort of rapid visual output (around 1 or 2
seconds, or maybe even more, is tolerable), I would love to know about
it. I've looked, but haven't found anything yet.
Thanks