Awesome LaTeX

This is a curated list of awesome stuff for the (La)TeX typesetting system.

Contents

• Contents
• Distributions
• Engines
  • LaTeX formulas on the web
• Editors
  • LaTeX-focused
  • General purpose text editors
  • Online editors
• Bibliography tools
• Build Tools
• Misc. Tools
• LaTeX-compatible GUI tools
• Packages
  • Tables
  • Graphics
    • PSTricks
    • TikZ
  • Source Code
  • Typography
• Templates
• Symbols
• Resources
• Showcases
• Tutorials
• Books
• Blogs
• Social media
• Meta Awesome-LaTeX
• Legend

Distributions

• MacTeX - Most common LaTeX distribution for Mac OS X, basically TeXLive with some Mac-specific tools added.
• TeX Live - Most common LaTeX distribution for Unix-like operating systems, including GNU/Linux. Also works on Windows.
• MikTeX - Most common LaTeX distribution for Windows (only).

Engines

• pdfTeX - TeX compiler that produces PDF files immediately instead of DVI files (nowadays, this is the standard compiler for many users).
• XeTeX - TeX compiler that provides better unicode and font support than TeX/pdfTeX (i.e. you can use the fonts of your operating system instead of only TeX fonts).
• LuaTeX - (La)TeX compiler that supports Lua code for scripting and has improved unicode and font support than standard TeX/pdfTeX.

LaTeX formulas on the web

• Auto-LaTeX Equations with Google Docs - Render high-quality math equations directly in Google Docs.
• MathJaX - JavaScript engine to render mathematical formulas on the web. The outcome looks really slick.
• mimeTeX - mimeTeX is a rather old tool to render LaTeX formulas to PNG figures for your web site, without actually needing a LaTeX installation on your server.
• mathTeX - mathTeX is the successor of mimeTeX: it produces nicer-looking images but it requires LaTeX to be installed on your server.
• KaTeX - KaTeX is a math rendering library made by Khan Academy focusing on fast load times. All output is processed as plain HTML instead of fixed images.

Editors

Because editing LaTeX code with notepad is not awesome. There are many editors out there, below are the most awesome editors. A complete list of LaTeX editors is collected at tex.stackexchange.com as big list of LaTeX Editors/IDEs.

• List of popular LaTeX editors - Community-maintained list of popular LaTeX editors including a screenshot and a short description.

LaTeX-focused

Some of the most awesome editor for LaTeX do just that: edit LaTeX.

• Kile - A great LaTeX editor originally from the Linux/KDE community. It runs fine on Windows and OS X as well.
• TeXMaker - Pretty good alternative to Kile.
• TeXStudio - Cross-platform LaTeX editor that stems from TeXMaker.
• WinEdt - The LaTeX editor many people swear by. Only for .
• TeXnicCenter - A quite old but free and decent editor for LaTeX.
• LyX - Cross-platform WYSIWYM editor that uses LaTeX behind the scenes to render documents.
• TeXShop - No-nonsense editor for LaTeX documents which is included in MacTeX.
• TeXWorks - No-nonsense editor for LaTeX code, modeled after TeXShop, but this one is cross-platform.
• BakomaTex - Commercial LaTeX editor that allows to edit your document both using its source code and WYSIWYG.
• Inlage - Commercial LaTeX editor with handwritten formula recognition, Excel importing and more nifty features.
• Texpad - Commercial LaTeX editor for OS X and iOS, with excellent features (document overview, synchronised PDF display, autocompletion, sync across devices...) that never get in the way of writing.

General purpose text editors

These editors are no one-trick ponies: sure, they edit LaTeX, but they can do a lot more!

• Atom

  • LaTeXTools - An Atom port of the Sublime Text package of the same name.

• Sublime Text

  • LaTeXing - Commercial plug-in to edit LaTeX.
  • LaTeXTools - Free LaTeX plugin for Sublime Text.

• Emacs

  • AucTeX - Emacs plugin for LaTeX that also shows a preview of equations and figures.
  • RefTeX - Emacs plugin for LaTeX that adds support for labels, references, and citations.

• Vim

  • Vim-LaTeX
  • LaTeX Live Preview - Instantly previews your LaTeX document.
  • vimtex - A modern vim plugin for editing LaTeX files. Has a variety of features including live preview and forward search.

• IntelliJ

  • TeXiFy-IDEA - Free LaTeX plugin for IntelliJ IDEA.

Online editors

Online editors that allow you to edit documents collaboratively.

• List of popular online LaTeX editors - Community-maintained list of popular online LaTeX editor including equation editors.
• Authorea - Online editor with built-in git support and bibliography tools.
• ShareLaTeX - Has pretty great LaTeX documentation and simple version control.
• Overleaf - Online editor, also with a WYSIWYM editor and git support.
• Papeeria - Online editor with built-in git support.
• JaxEdit - Online LaTeX editor with Live Preview and nice presentation mode.

Bibliography tools

• JabRef - Very powerful cross-platform (Java) bibtex editor. The GUI looks quite dated, though.
• Papis - Extremely customizable, powerful and simple cross-platform (Python) library manager. It has a very complete Command-Line-Interface, several GUIs and scripting capability.
• Bibdesk - Great bibliography editor for .
• Zotero - Reference manager for your browser that also exports to bibtex and integrates with many LaTeX editors.
• Mendeley - Both an app and cloud client to manage your references and PDFs. Can sync out to a bibtex file for your LaTeX workflow.

Build Tools

Compiling LaTeX documents can be tedious, build tools help you to manage the compilation process.

• Arara (GitHub repo) - Simple tool that allows you to specify which tools to call inside your document and it can be extended quite easily.
• latexmk - Build tool that is the commonly used by many LaTeX editors (LaTeXing, TeXShop, ...) to build your LaTeX files.
• latex-makefile - Makefile based build tool that attempts to be as general and lightweight as possible.

Misc. Tools

• CaTeX - Concatenates LaTeX documents with attention for properly merging the preamble.
• Pandoc - This program converts almost any document format (LaTeX, DOC, markdown, ...) to almost any other format. A great tool to aid workflows where multiple formats are used.
• Codecogs Eqn Editor - Online LaTeX equation editor that allows you to produce figures containing an equation.
• LaTeXiT - LaTeXit is an equation editor that makes it easy to drag-and-drop rendered equations (as PDF, PNG, ...) into your non-LaTeX documents on the Mac.
• KLaTeXFormula - Cross-platform alternative for LaTeXit.
• EqualX - Graphical LaTeX formula editor.
• ChkTeX - Linter / code checker for LaTeX documents.
• LaTeXEqEdit - LaTeX formula editor for Windows.
• Laeqed - Crossplatform LaTeX formula to PNG convertor.

LaTeX-compatible GUI tools

• TikzEdt (also: GitHub repo) - WYSIWYG and text-based editor for TikZ pictures.
• TikZ-Editor - Live-previewing editor for TikZ figures.
• IPE - Drawing tool that integrates well with LaTeX commands and documents.
• GeoGebra - Cross-platform geometry tool with output to TikZ.
• Dia - Cross-platform diagramming tool that can export to PSTricks and MetaPost code.

Packages

• CTAN - The Comprehensive TeX Archive Network is the place to look for useful packages and documentation.

References

• Cross-reference packages explained - Elaboration on cross-reference packages (cleveref, varioref, theoremref, nameref, ...): Which to use, which conflict?

Tables

• Excel2LaTeX - Excel (2010 and older) macros to produce LaTeX tabular code.
• csv2latex - Converts CSV files from your favorite programs to LaTeX tabulars.
• Tables Generator - This website provides a graphical interface to input your table and produces properly-formatted code for LaTeX, Markdown, HTML, etc.
• pgfplotstable - This package displays numerical tables rounded to desired precision in various display formats. It can even read CSV files to include directly in your LaTeX document.

Graphics

PSTricks

PSTricks is a great library to draw figures for inclusion in PostScript/DVI files.

TikZ

TikZ is an awesome package with many plugins that allow you to create figures from within your LaTeX documents. Typically, it is easier to get to work with pdflatex than PSTricks is.

• TeXample - Blog about LaTeX, with a big collection of TikZ figures.
• LaTeX en SI - Useful website with some custom packages to draw special plots (Bode, Nyquist, electrical schematics, block schematics, ...) using TikZ. Note that everything is in French.
• tkz - A collection of TikZ-based packages to make plots and graphs.
• pgfplots - A truly awesome plotting library on top of and in the style of TikZ/pgf. This library can load in CSV data files, perform some calculations and create beautiful plots.
• A very minimal introduction to TikZ (PDF) - A short introductory document to the world of TikZ, written by Jacques Crémer.
• PetarV-/TikZ - A collection of publication-ready PGF/TikZ figures by Petar Veličković.

Source Code

• minted - The minted package uses pygments to generate the listings. In this way, LaTeX is able to format more than 300 programming and markup languages and other text formats.

Typography

• microtype - This package improves the appearance of your documents by enabling margin kerning and font expansion.

Templates

• LaTeX templates - Collection of templates for papers, posters, resumés, theses, books, presentations, … for LaTeX.
• Ultimate Beamer Theme List - Links to various beamer themes along with PDF previews.

Symbols

• Comprehensive LaTeX symbol list - A very extensive list of symbols for LaTeX. Available in A4 and letter sizes.
• Detexify - You draw the symbol and this site/app will tell you the LaTeX command.

Resources

• TUG - The TeX User Group is a way to get in touch with other (La)TeX users.
• TeXDoc - Online interface to the texdoc utility to browse LaTeX packages and documentation.
• Dickimaw Books: LaTeX resources - Great overview of resources useful for LaTeX.
• LaTeX cookbook - Sibling of TeXample, contains quite a bit of example code.
• Visual FAQ - Typesetting issues and a link to appropriate TeX FAQ answers.
• MartinThoma's LaTeX example - GitHub repository containing example LaTeX documents.
• MacTeX Wiki: TeX Extras - Overview of useful tools for LaTeX. Many of them are specific for Mac, but quite a bit are useful for other platforms as well.
• LaTeX community - Forum and blog about LaTeX.
• German: Neue TeX FAQ - A modern and updated LaTeX FAQ in German.
• BibTeX Style Examples - Example output of common BibTeX styles (BST files).

Showcases

• Showcase of beautiful typography done in TeX & friends - A set of examples demonstrating the power of LaTeX.
• Showcase of beautiful invitations in TeX - A showcase of invitations typeset using LaTeX.
• Showcase of "programming your document" paradigm - A collection of LaTeX documents demonstrating how LaTeX can be used like a programming language.
• TUG: TeX showcase - Website from the TUG that shows some examples of what LaTeX can do.

Tutorials

• The (Not So) Short Introduction to LaTeX2e - A very comprehensive introduction to LaTeX.
• Begin LaTeX in minutes - A brief intro to LaTeX for beginners that helps you use LaTeX with ease.
• Getting to Grips with LaTeX - A complete guide going through the majority of things you need to know about LaTeX.

Books

• Wikibooks: LaTeX - The LaTeX wikibook. Not really a paper book, but it is equally extensive.
• The LaTeX Companion, F. Mittelbach (2004)
• LaTeX Graphics Companion, M. Goossens (2007)

Blogs

• TeXblog - Blog about LaTeX and everything related.
• texblog.org - Blog on LaTeX and related topics (tutorials, packages, code snippets, etc.).
• TeX Talk - Blog for the TeX Stack Exchange site with news and interviews.

Social media

• LinkedIn: TeX/LaTeX User Group
• Twitter: @TeXtip - Tips related to (La)TeX by John D. Cook.
• TeX.StackExchange - StackExchange TeX section.

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Meta Awesome-LaTeX

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Legend

The icons indicating Mac, Linux and Windows compatibility show when a program is only available for those platforms. So absence of those icons means that the software is fully cross-platform.

Logo	Description
	Mac OS X
	GNU/Linux
	Microsoft Windows
	Free Open-Source Software

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