5

Possible Duplicate:
Is there any way to get real-time compilation for LaTeX?
How can I see what am I writing in a TeX editor?

I've seen some websites, such as ones on the stack exchange, that are able to interpret and display latex code as you type. I'm curious if there are any freeware latex editors that can do that same thing... That is, compile and display in real time as the latex code is added. This will be very helpful to me to detect my errors earlier on rather than waiting until i've written a lot of code and then debug it.

Improve this question
8
  • gummi, bakoma, etc? – kiss my armpit Aug 30 '12 at 15:52
  • 5
    You could always just compile regularly; there is no reason to wait until you have written a lot of code. – Ian Thompson Aug 30 '12 at 15:57
  • 1
    The technology used on the network is MathJax, which interprets only a subset of TeX-like math notation. The overhead for that is much less than for completely typesetting a full LaTeX document. – Joseph Wright♦ Aug 30 '12 at 15:57
  • MathJax is a javascript library running on a web browser to render TeX (other than TikZ and PSTricks) stuffs. Among others, gummi, bakoma are TeX editors that also work with TikZ and PSTricks. – kiss my armpit Aug 30 '12 at 15:59
  • @IanThompson: True, but that gets cumbersome when you're writting a lot of equations. – Paul Aug 30 '12 at 16:02
6

there exists only one real WYSIWIG editor http://mirror.ctan.org/systems/win32/microimp/microimp.pdf, which was the first and last try to create one for LaTeX. In general: it is not possible to have a WYSIWIG editor! A user can overwrite anything of the existing code or define anything new. This makes it nearly impossible to write such an editor.

What you can have is an editor which runs in the background ???latex when the source code changes. But this implies two windows, input and output, like Gummi does: http://dev.midnightcoding.org/projects/gummi

Improve this answer
2

Emacs with preview-latex does what you are looking for: http://www.gnu.org/software/auctex/preview-latex.html.

I've tried it and works but I don't like all the auxiliary files it needs to generate, so I tend to just "compile early compile often" :)

Improve this answer
1
  • 1
    no, it shows only parts of the document, eg math stuff, in a preview – user2478 Aug 30 '12 at 17:50
1

You also have something similar in the TeXMacs-project. It will give you TeX-quality output, and a pretty true WYSIWYG input.

I have never used it myself.

Improve this answer
1
  • as far as I know it is not a (La)TeX editor. It uses it's own file format and , of course, some facilities from TeX – user2478 Aug 30 '12 at 16:52

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.