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Publish your academic texts, eBooks and more using this nifty application for Windows and Mac devices

Publish your academic texts, eBooks and more using this nifty application for Windows and Mac devices

Vote: (5 votes)

Program license: Free

Developer: Pascal Brachet

Works under: Windows

Also available for Mac

Vote:

Program license

(5 votes)

Free

Developer

Pascal Brachet

Works under:

Also available for

Windows

Mac

Pros

  • An incredibly robust LaTeX editor positively packed full of features
  • A free cross-platform editor with over ten years of development

Cons

  • Focuses exclusively on a complex and esoteric typesetting format

Texmaker is a professional publishing tool that uses the LaTeX formatting language to help professionals publish complex documents ranging from medical papers to academic texts. LaTeX isn't necessarily an easy format to learn. This document preparation system makes use of plain text rather than the ribbons, menus, and toolbars that you'd expect to find in more user friendly and popular word processing applications. Instead, it uses markup tags like those you'd find in programming languages like HTML. LaTeX isn't intended to just be obtuse. It exists to help facilitate complex texts, particularly those that can be expected to use multiple alphabets or complex formulaic expressions to get the point across. By leaning the formatting language, users can more readily access the complex syntax they need to use. But you don't have to jump into LaTeX alone. Texmaker offers a whole bevy of tools you can use to more easily integrate this markup language into your documents.

In essence, Texmaker takes a number of the useful what you see is what you get features you'd find in word processors like Microsoft Word and makes them available even to individuals working with the LaTex syntax. An editor to the left of your document code allows you to quickly access features like spellcheck, code folding, and auto-complete, and they're arranged in paneled icons so you don't have to worry about hunting through layers and layers of menus. To the right is a PDF document that allows you to see how your code will translate in real time, a huge boon if you're still learning the fundamentals of LaTeX. LaTeX may have a steep learning curve, but Texmaker can make the process of understanding it significantly easier.

Like more traditional text editors, Texmaker is highly configurable as well. Collapsible menus resemble something you'd find in a coding editor like Geany, and they assist users by tucking away portions of your document that otherwise might get in the way. And since Texmaker is built specifically to meet the needs of LaTeX users, it's uniquely designed to auto-complete your script using common LaTeX commands. On a more macro level, Texmaker provides a number of tools you can use to oversee your larger project and prevent anything from becoming too cluttered. The structured view puts all the components of your larger document in a neat tree structure so you can get a big picture view whenever you need to, and the "master mode" option allows you to further segregate your documents into separate files and folders to make your life easier and more structured. One of the best features is the error handling system which helps identify common problems and correct them. That means more time focusing on your project and less time hunting through lines and lines of code in pursuit of an error's source.

Pros

  • An incredibly robust LaTeX editor positively packed full of features
  • A free cross-platform editor with over ten years of development

Cons

  • Focuses exclusively on a complex and esoteric typesetting format