I am getting a mac soon, and I am freaked out the fact that I won't be able to use my very much familiar TeXnicCenter + SumatraPDF magic tools.   I googled around and decided to switch to TeXMaker, which is available for both pc and mac. It got some nice features, but frequently freeze when I am editing my dissertation document that involves multiple active files. And the forward-inverse-search on the multiple file situation does not work.  Does any one happen to know a good alternative for XnicCenter + SumatraPDF on mac? Thanks very much!
8821
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  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.
92565
I have a new app I'll be working on where I have to generate a Word document that contains tables, graphs, a table of contents and text.  What's a good API to use for this?  How sure are you that it supports graphs, ToCs, and tables?  What are some hidden gotcha's in using them?  Some clarifications:   I can't output a PDF, they want a Word doc. They're using MS Word 2003 (or 2007), not OpenOffice Application is running on *nix app-server   It'd be nice if I could start with a template doc and just fill in some spaces with tables, graphs, etc.  Edit: Several good answers below, each with their own faults as far as my current situation.  Hard to pick a "final answer" from them.  Think I'll leave it open, and hope for better solutions to be created.  Edit: The OpenOffice UNO project does seem to be closest to what I asked for.  While POI is certainly more mainstream, it's too immature for what I want.
104976
I know there are some command-line applications like pdflatex that can help me to compile a LaTex document from C#.Net (using the System.Diagnostics.Process class) .   I wanna know that what's the best command-line tool for compiling a TeX document ?
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more like a "Bug"-Report, but maybe anyone knows a good workaround?  I use latest texMaker on Mac, with biblatex and using \parencite{}. It seems the spellchecking ignores everything before the \parencite{}.  See example Image, marked text gets ignored and after \parentcite{} it works.    EDIT: Thanks for the quick response! Here are some more minimal tests.    Texmaker 5.0.2  Packages:  \usepackage[english]{babel} \usepackage[latin1]{inputenc} \usepackage[]{multicol} \usepackage[nameinlink,noabbrev, english]{cleveref} \usepackage{blindtext}   and a few PDF Packages, if needed I can give full list.  Cheers Hannes
100416
It looks there is a problem with TexShop and multibib package. multibib package expects that you do bibtex xxx where xxx is your own newcites. However, when using TexShop it looks like it only does it for the main document. Therefore, the only way I have to make it work is to do it from command line (notice the bibtex xxx):   pdflatex main  bibtex main  bibtex xxx  pdflatex main  pdflatex main   Do you know a workaround I can do so that I can latex without problem in any IDE?  Thanks!
93424
I'm currently a presentation based on a paper originally written in Latex. Currently, I use Kile and Ubuntu for my work.  What I'm finding is that I need a large number of the equations from the original paper scattered around the presentations (and are using them to annotate diagrams etc).  My current method of screenshots + gimp is rather slow :)  So, what I would like to do is compile the tex document and instead of creating a pdf/dvi, I would like it to spit out a number of files, which each file being one of the equations from the document, preferably in a vector format, but I will live with a PNG if I have to, so long as it's of high enough resolution.  I've had a look at a number of utilities.   The following web utility:  does more or less what I want for an individually typed equation. However, I've used a lot of mactros in equations that make it a little messy to use (for example)  \newcommand{\SkewSymmetric}[1]{\ensuremath{ \left[ #1 \right]_{\times}}}   I've had a look at pdf2svg, but it doesn't quite do what I want - I still need to crop out the equation of interest.  Is there anything else I should look at?
62064
I am using this program "Scientific Workplace", which seems to have a proprietary-non-standard version of LaTeX, i.e., a version that cannot be readily interpreted by standard Latex readers; I uploaded a .tex workplace file to someone who has a LaTeX reader, and no matter how he tried to open it, all he got was a garbled mess.  Does anyone know how to go around this, i.e., does anyone now if there is a special way of saving a file in Sci Workplace, or some other trick so that a Sci. Workplace-version Latex file can be  read by standard LaTeX readers?
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Texmaker has a Built-in pdf viewer which supports synctex forward/inverse search out of the box. This Built-in viewer can be displayed embedded or in a separate window, external viewers always have a separate window. As I have two screens, I am using the two-window layout.  Now I would like to switch to  as external viewer, but cannot find how to configure Texmaker to get Forward search working. I have filed a  to add that information to the  already. Does someone here know how to do it? Probably using some ...
100188
I would really love to have a software or tool which provided real time compilation of my LaTeX document (to be able to see the final pdf or dvi document as I type the latex code), especially for when I am drawing pictures using tikZ. So far, I know of two things, but none of them work for me. They are:   : This is only for tikZ, which would be perfect for me, but unfortunately as far as I know it only works with Ubuntu and Debian, and I use Mac OS X (so I have never actually tried it, though I did dig a lot to see whether I would be able to install on my mac and from what I see it is really what I want - I am even considering installing Ubuntu just to use it!). : This is a minor mode for Emacs. It was extremely hard to get it to work on the mac (see my quest ), and it is not all that fast. The speed is not all that big of a deal for me, but the fact that it does not work with tikZ pictures is (the nodes all collapse in one point so that the words are all one on the top of the other).   So my question is: is there a software ideally like KtikZ or another type of editor which provides real-time compilation and that I can use on my mac? I guess if you know of a Windows/Linux option I would also like to know, and the same for a way to set up a script to get the document compiled every 5 seconds or so (I am sure I have seen this written somewhere, but I don't know whether I can do it with a mac or whether it is editor/pdf viewer dependent), but what I really want is a software/tool which would work with a mac.  To be clear, I am not after something like LyX, that is, I am not after a WYSIWYG-type thing, but rather something where I can type real LaTeX and see my code, but have at the same time another window showing me the pdf (or dvi) file compiled.
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I have heard rumors that you can compile documents online, and more specifically that Google has a free online compiler, but I have never been able to find any. Is there a way to compile documents online, so that I can write and compile documents even if I don't have a TeX distribution installed on my computer?
109120
I'm a relatively new user of Latex. I'm using TeXStudio on a Windows 8.1 system writing a long document (document class book). I'm trying to make glossaries package work properly and after ~2-3h of googling it kinda work. The same TeXStudio on a MacBook, with exact same *.tex files work flawlessly.  On windows, when I compile the glossary (F9), i get the following:  Unescaped left brace in regex is illegal here in regex; marked by &lt;-- HERE in m/\\\@input{ &lt;-- HERE (.+)\.aux/ at C:\Program Files\MiKTeX 2.9\scripts\glossaries\makeglossaries line 634.   I'm not familiar with Perl syntax, but the 634 line is the following:  634 if (m/\\\@input{(.+)\.aux/}) 635    { 636       &amp;scan_aux($1);  .  .      # v2.04 added  .      # (Fix provided by Daniel Grund)   .      next; 641    }   Compiling on the Mac is working properly.  I want to make it work on the windows system, as it's the professional computer that I use more often (I don't carry my Mac at work or my Win at home).  \documentclass[12pt]{book} ... \usepackage[acronym, toc]{glossaries} \input{./Tex_files/glossary.tex} \makeglossaries   The glossary.tex is the following:  \newacronym{EBL}{EBL}{Electron Blocking Layer} \newacronym{TFB}{TFB}{name)}   And i cite in the text as follows in two occasions, in chapters 1 and 2.  \acrfull{EBL} \acrfull{TFB}   The main.tex file i use after the \begin{document} is as follows:  \begin{document} .... \printglossary[type=\acronymtype, title= List of Abbreviations] \mainmatter \include{./TeX_files/chapter01} % Chapter 1 \include{./TeX_files/chapter02} % Chapter 2   I installed the Strawberry Perl version 5.26 64bit from perl.org as before installing it I got the message : "Perl interpreter not found".   My google searching didn't show any relative answers and therefore the post.. Sorry if it's a duplicate!  Many thanks in advance...  Alex  PS. Edited the document to add preamble and the rest of the code.
29859
Is there a tool out there, preferably free, specifically for making custom, system-agnostic character sheets? I'm looking for something a little more focused than a general program like PhotoShop/GIMP, Illustrator/Inkscape, or Word.
22075
Even the simple ctrl+F is not working... I tried installing texmaker from software center and , but shortcuts still doesn't work...
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A new study in 1 concludes that even novice MS Word users perform better than expert LaTeX users in document creation.   I have read the article and I feel like I have identified some flaws in their approach and design but I figured this community would be the best positioned to rigorously evaluate these results.  Based on this study can we conclude that Word works better than LaTeX?   Markus Knauff &amp; Jelica Nejasmic. 2014. An Efficiency Comparison of Document Preparation Systems Used in Academic Research and Development. PLOS ONE DOI:    UPDATE Since the question has been closed, but it's clear that there is interest to discuss the topic, I've set up a .  UPDATE 2 I have created a  to clarify the reason why this question was closed when other similar questions remain open.  UPDATE 3 People in glass houses... The article had to be republished a few months later due to publishing errors whilst using Arbortext :-) see
26967
I am editing my PhD thesis using Emacs &amp; Auctex, but my elisp is quite weak. Additionally, I build my thesis in a subdirectory, using makefiles generated by CMake and the UseLATEX CMake package, which I highly recommend.  I can’t figure out how to tell auctex that when I build the document it should do something like: make -C build/digital and that the pdf file being output is going to be at build/digital/thesis.pdf even though the source is at ./thesis.tex  p.s. I HIGHLY recommend checking out UseLATEX, the CMake package for easily compiling LaTeX documents.
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After having updated to Mac OS X El Capitan (10.11), I'm no more able to compile using either TexMaker or TexShop. This is the message I get from TexShop  "/usr/texbin/pdflatex does not exist. TeXShop is  a front end for TeX, but you also need a TeX distribution. Perhaps such a distribution was not installed or was removed during a system upgrade. If so, go to  and follow the instructions to (re)install MacTeX. A less likely possibility is that a tool path is incorrectly configured in TeXShop preferences. This can happen if you are using the macports or fink distributions."  I tried to change the path in Preferences-Engine, as many suggested. Yet, it doesn't work either. Any help?
71238
I began my physics studies last summer. All our written assignment is in LaTeX and that's ok - and I use Texmaker. I think Texmanker is a good program and I have just one problem with it. I can't install a danish spellcheck and use it in LaTeX. That is not nice, so I really need your help!  Help me please. Tell me where and how to install a danish spellcheck and how to use it in Texmaker, pls. I am desperate! :/