Which editors can autocomplete any word from document?

Question

Of course, any LaTeX editor will autocomplete common LaTeX commands and environments. Many (most?) let user add new commands to be autocompleted. However, in technical documents there will usually be specific terms, which are encountered often enough (and may be quite long) to be worth autocompleting, but aren't commands and are different from one document to another. So it's quite nice to be able to autocomplete any word which exists in the document (or any of the open documents).

I know Emacs, Vim, Kile and TeXstudio support this; do any others?

Answer 1

Any LaTeX editor can accommodate this style of auto-completion by means of macro definitions. It is probably the fastest way to perform this without having to switch from your existing editor to a new/different one. In my opinion, it is flexible, transferable and accommodates a host of variability that you may require based on (say) conditional support from LaTeX packages.

Since the replacement text is typically used inside regular text, the xspace package is of great help. It inserts a space after a command sequence only if it is followed by a space. This is a common issue with using command sequences in regular text. For example, A \TeX command sequence. will expand to A TeXcommand sequence. since the space represents the end of \TeX and is therefore gobbled. xspace is the way around this:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{xspace}% http://ctan.org/pkg/xspace
% Definitions for words to auto-complete
\newcommand{\sync}{synchrocyclotrons\xspace}%
%...
\begin{document}
What mighty \sync you have, sir! Get me one of those \sync.
\end{document}

If you change your mind (to quote ABBA), you can just change the macro definition. It would probably be the same amount of effort to do this than it would to modify the auto-completion segment provided by such an editor.

To go one step further, you can even define your macros to have (say) starred version * which expand to the plural form if use, otherwise it uses the singular form:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{xparse}% http://ctan.org/pkg/xprase
\usepackage{xspace}% http://ctan.org/pkg/xspace
% Definitions for words to auto-complete
\NewDocumentCommand{\sync}{s}{%
  synchrocyclotron\IfBooleanTF{#1}{s}{}\xspace
}
%...
\begin{document}
That's a huge \sync! There are plenty more \sync* over there.
\end{document}

The xparse package provides an easy interface for working with starred versions of commands/environments.

Answer 2

In addition to AucTeX commands of insertion/completion for macros or environments, emacs provides a specific method to expand any word in any buffer and in any mode: the command dabbrev-expand (M-/).

dabbrev-expand expands to the most recent, preceding word for which this is a prefix. If no suitable preceding word is found, words following point are considered. If still no suitable word is found, then look in the buffers accepted by the function pointed out by variable dabbrev-friend-buffer-function.

A positive prefix argument, N, says to take the Nth backward distinct possibility. A negative argument says search forward.

If the cursor has not moved from the end of the previous expansion and no argument is given, replace the previously-made expansion with the next possible expansion not yet tried.

(The latter feature is very handy...)

Answer 3

Kile has autocompletion for all words in the document. This is the documentation for that feature.

Answer 4

TeXworks has some builtin autocompletion, but take a look at the script autocompleteForTexworks. The script can perform completion on long words earlier used in your document, labels and filenames for \input, \include and \includegraphics macros. In addition it can also close earlier opened environments.

There is a video of it in action on youtube.

Guide to use.

1. start typing the long word that should be autocompleted
2. press "crtl + m" and the autocompleter will complete the word or at least make a suggestion for a completion.
3. if not satisfied with the suggestion press "crtl + m" until the correct word is found.

Disclaimer: I'm author of the autocomplete script.

Answer 5

If you are using Windows - TeXStudio (earlier TeXmakerX) has these facilities. The down side is everytime you time some environment or command it shows the complete help for it!

Answer 6

Use vim with the Supertab plugin. So you can type in the first letters of your long word and than type TAB.

Answer 7

On Windows, Notepad++ has that capability. You will find instructions on how to set up Notepad++ as an LaTeX IDE in this StackExchange message.

Answer 8

For Mac OS X, BBEdit includes words from the current document as autocompletion candidates.

Answer 9

Texmaker is the best typesetting editor which I've worked with. It has versions for Linux, Windows & Mac.

I used it in Windows which has many auto-completion commands, and provides a dictionary for many languages.

Answer 10

For WinEdt (Windows) there are two macros for auto-completion on WinEdt's community site:

• complete will incrementally search backwards for words starting with the same letters as the current word; you can invoke the macro multiple times until you get the word you are looking for;
• completeWord will instead present you a list of possible completions to choose from.

Answer 11

Under Linux I recommend "Kate". It's simple, fast & pretty amazing!

An other alternative for Linux that wasn't mentioned above, is Geany with GeanyLaTeX Plugin.

On Windows Notepad++ is the most brilliant solution. But TexStudio is also not bad...