Decision Guidance ⇒ Advice wanted on a GUI editor

[sub]

Hi,

this is my first post!

I'm more or less a newbie, except that LaTeX was my introduction to programming in the mid nineties, and the reason I learned first PostScript, then elisp (I used emacs and GhostScript as an IDE). I've since had a career as a software engineer, mostly working with C++ on HA and mission critical embedded systems, but I digress...

My early exposure to LaTeX was at a time when I was working as a researcher and technical illustrator in a scientific institute. I've also worked in prepress and book design and have an abiding interest in both type and illustration.

So, while a newbie, I've been conscious of LaTeX, it's progenitor and it's high reputation for a long time. I've toyed with it occasionally and would like to use it to greater effect. I'm also interested in font design using Font Forge or similar, so I'd like to learn the finer points of font creation and typography in LaTeX.

I'm running Debian Bookworm with XFCE, and tried a couple of wysiwyg packages (lyx and TeXstudio) but neither functioned correctly on installation and I don't have any interest in debugging them, at least until I've explored the alternatives. Actually, TeXstudio works a treat now that I've installed LaTeX Live! Lyx still gives me this error:

Code: Select all

!pdfTeX error: pdflatex (file ./0_usr_share_lyx_images_buffer-view.pdf): readin

compiling the example page, but works for plain text. Anyway, I've realised Lyx doesn't enable editing source, and uses something called evil red code, so isn't wiw anyay.

I've decided to dispense with the GUI wrappers and get the TeX ecosystem running first, so I'm installing Tex Live as detailed here: https://www.tug.org/texlive/quickinstall.html

I hate to think what it's doing to my free disk space, because it's been installing for a good while and is only up to the p's.

...done now. Trying a few examples from https://www.learnlatex.org and have to say I'm loving it!

The final piece of the puzzle is that I won't be using LaTeX much unless I can use it for routine word processing. I'm currently using LibreOffice, but I'm not a fan, and I like the idea that I can maintain my document history with git if I use LaTeX. I'll probably also be looking for a good wysiwyg markdown editor, or maybe just use VS Code, but I really want light weight, visual rich text editing, without hassles or overhead. Something like (MS) Wordpad, but sexier.

I can manage some complexity, but I am not looking for an excuse to tinker. I am OVER tinkering, I just want to get stuff done. In particular, will wysiwyg packages like Gummi automatically use my LaTeX Live installation? Is there any danger of their messing with it? I've installed it in my home dir for now...

Oh, and I've found this page, which is very helpful: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions ... itors-ides

But still interested in any responses.

Any suggestions?

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Hi sub,

welcome to the forum!

As a former researcher and illustrator, you may love TikZ in LaTeX!

• TikZ.net: huge gallery by several authors, mostly science
• TeXample.net: large gallery by hundreds of authors
• pgfplots.net: plots and diagrams
• TikZ.org: examples of my book

Regarding editors, I prefer TeXworks because I like a fast, non-complicated editor that doesn't eat my computer's memory. I want source and preview side by side and a compiler button (or key), plus syntax highlighting, of course. Maybe more that I don't remember right now. TeXworks doesn't have many features, primarily the necessary things, I guess I'm too lazy to look through the menus and features of a complex editor.

Stefan

[sub]

Hi sub,

welcome to the forum!

As a former researcher and illustrator, you may love TikZ in LaTeX!

• TikZ.net: huge gallery by several authors, mostly science
• TeXample.net: large gallery by hundreds of authors
• pgfplots.net: plots and diagrams
• TikZ.org: examples of my book

Regarding editors, I prefer TeXworks because I like a fast, non-complicated editor that doesn't eat my computer's memory. I want source and preview side by side and a compiler button (or key), plus syntax highlighting, of course. Maybe more that I don't remember right now. TeXworks doesn't have many features, primarily the necessary things, I guess I'm too lazy to look through the menus and features of a complex editor.

Stefan

Hi Stefan,

thanks for this. I agree about TeXworks. It's nice and snappy, and not overloaded with features.

I would like to know if there's an editor like Lyx, that allows direct editing of formatted text, but also allows source editing using standard LaTeX. If I recall, VS Code allows markdown editing in that manner, so maybe LaTeX as well?

TikZ looks really powerful too, thanks. I'll check it out! I don't have so much need for diagrams these days, but it looks like it would be a great way to work within the LaTeX ecosystem.

There are so many options to do graphics these days... Back in the day I did a lot of work with GLE (gle-graphics.org) and also VTK in it's early iterations, but mostly I used xlisp and C to generate PostScript from data. More recently, I've used D3.js and also InkScape and plain SVG, sometimes with XSLT. A lot depends on the final application (interactive or print). I use Plant UML too, but only to help me think...

Completely off topic, but I noticed you're a math wizz. Do you know anything much about Lie algebras and representation theory?

[Stefan Kottwitz]

I learned and enjoyed representation theory, but that's 25 years ago I still have the books, but I hardly remember details.

Regarding the editors, Overleaf has a rich text editor feature. I did not see another editor for switching between visual text and code.

Stefan

[sub]

Overleaf has a rich text editor feature. I did not see another editor for switching between visual text and code.

Cool thanks, not really looking for online editing.

I have one last question...

When I installed LaTeX Live I made a typo in texlive.profile, leaving out the 'texlive' directory for TEXMFSYSVAR

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#TEXDIR /usr/local/texlive/2023
TEXDIR /home/user/.local/texlive/2023

TEXMFCONFIG ~/.texlive2023/texmf-config
TEXMFHOME ~/texmf

#TEXMFLOCAL /usr/local/texlive/texmf-local
TEXMFLOCAL /home/user/.local/texlive/texmf-local

#TEXMFSYSCONFIG /usr/local/texlive/2023/texmf-config
TEXMFSYSCONFIG /home/user/.local/texlive/2023/texmf-config

#TEXMFSYSVAR /usr/local/texlive/2023/texmf-var
TEXMFSYSVAR /home/user/.local/2023/texmf-var

..so I've ended up with directories looking like this:

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~/.local$ tree -L 2 -d texlive 2023
texlive
├── 2023
│   ├── bin
│   ├── readme-html.dir
│   ├── readme-txt.dir
│   ├── texmf-config
│   ├── texmf-dist
│   ├── texmf-var
│   └── tlpkg
└── texmf-local
    ├── bibtex
    ├── doc
    ├── dvips
    ├── fonts
    ├── metapost
    ├── tex
    ├── tlpkg
    └── web2c
2023
└── texmf-var
    ├── fonts
    ├── luatex-cache
    ├── tex
    ├── web2c
    └── xdvi

I don't really want the 2023 folder sitting outside of the texlive tree. Is there a config somewhere to change if I move it?

[Stefan Kottwitz]

I usually just install it and it's fine; I don't play with directories. Perhaps you can move the directory and run texhash to update the contents. Or, just reinstall, if there's an issue. Takes some time, but not more space if you delete the previous installation.

Stefan

[sub]

I usually just install it and it's fine; I don't play with directories. Perhaps you can move the directory and run texhash to update the contents. Or, just reinstall, if there's an issue. Takes some time, but not more space if you delete the previous installation.

Stefan

Think I'll just reinstall it. After all, I don't need to sit and watch!

I generally don't put user apps in /usr/local, but I like the way the installer makes it easy to change. Just have to remember to focus...