Kile, the document processor for nerds

Filed in archive News on November 17, 2007

As the second semester of the academic year 2007-2008 starts in the Philippines, Computer Science students start to master LaTeX for their papers. Whilst most of them would rather use their favorite word processor, they are required to learn how to format their documents using the nerd-word. :)

To some, they stick with WYSIWYM (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Mean) tools like LyX. I am not been fond of tools like LyX since I'd rather edit documents using an text-editor and add my mark-ups but I enjoy looking for tools for my students to use.



I just discovered Kile, another WYSIWYM LaTeX tool. Its main features are listed as (from the website):

• Compile, convert and view your document with one click.


• Auto-completion of (La)TeX commands


• Templates and wizards make starting a new document very little work.


• Easy insertion of many standard tags and symbols and the option to define (an arbitrary number of) user defined tags.


• Inverse and forward search: click in the DVI viewer and jump to the corresponding LaTeX line in the editor, or jump from the editor to the corresponding page in the viewer.


• Finding chapter or sections is very easy, Kile constructs a list of all the chapter etc. in your document. You can use the list to jump to the corresponding section.


• Collect documents that belong together into a project.


• Easy insertion of citations and references when using projects.


• Flexible and smart build system to compile your LaTeX documents.


• QuickPreview, preview a selected part of your document.


• Easy access to various help sources.


• Advanced editing commands.

So to my students, here's another tool worth looking at. Maybe you'd like it more than LyX.