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This article will explain in detail how to use LaTeXila on Linux. The editor thinks it is very practical, so I share it with you as a reference. I hope you can get something after reading this article.

LaTeXila is a multilingual LaTeX editor designed for Linux users who prefer the GTK+ look and feel. This software is simple, but powerful enough and customizable, so if you are interested in LaTeX, you should try this tool.

In the following quick guide, I'll show you how to use LaTeXila and introduce its main features. But before you begin, you may want to ask:

Why choose to use LaTeX?

If I want to create a text document, why don't I use regular tools like LibreOffice or Abiword? The reason is that LaTeX editors generally provide more powerful formatting tools than regular text editors, allowing you to focus on the content of the document during writing. LaTeX is a document preparation system designed to simplify the processing of most common publications, such as books or scientific reports, which usually contain a lot of mathematical formulas, multilingual typesetting elements, cross-references and citations, references, and so on. Although the above elements can also be handled with LibreOffice, it is relatively easy to use LaTeXila, and if handled properly, you will get a high-quality document.

Start working on a new document and set the structure of the article

First, we need to create a new file in LaTeXila, which can be done by clicking the "New File" icon in the upper left corner, and then it will open a dialog box for us to select a template to start writing quickly.

Open the LaTex editor

Let's assume that I'm going to write a book, so I choose a book template and add the title and author to the corresponding parentheses as shown in the screenshot below:

Open the book template

Now let me explain something about the structure of the article. I know it looks like coding, and if you're a writer rather than a programmer, it may be strange to work like this, but let me finish, and I'll explain it.

Between lines * * and line 9, we have written all the basic elements needed to write the entire document. For example, in the * * line, we can define the size of the paper and font by modifying [a4paperpd11pt]. In this square bracket, we can add more options separated by English commas.

Between the second and fourth lines, we can see entries that all start with\ userpackage, followed by options wrapped in square brackets and commands wrapped in parentheses. These commands are enhanced macro packages that LaTeXila has installed on our system by default and will be used in most templates. Special attention should be paid to font encoding, character encoding and font types.

Then let's take a look at the line\ maketitle, where we can add a separate title page, and by default the contents of the title will be placed at the top of the * page. Similarly, the line that contains\ tableofcontents will automatically generate a directory of books.

*, we can name the chapter name ourselves, which can be achieved by adding the chapter name in parentheses after\ chapter. * chapters will be automatically marked as * chapters. You can add content to the next line until the next new line begins with\ chapter, which will be the content of this chapter. The new chapter will be automatically marked as Chapter 2, and so on.

Format of LaTex

Sections can also be divided into smaller blocks using the command\ section, or even smaller sections using\ subsection. Each section and chapter will be automatically detected by\ tableofcontents and their titles and page numbers will be used to populate the contents of the catalog. Take a look at the screenshot below to see how chapters and sections are typeset in your book.

LaTex Preview

If you want to browse the structure, you can change the toolbar on the left to the "structure" Structure option and make sure that all the structures are as expected. Here, you can also control any data tables and pictures in each section.

LaTex structure

At this point, someone may want to include the location of tables and pictures in the catalog. To do this, you need to add the following two lines after\ tableofcontents:

\ listoffigures\ listoftables

The signal that marks the end of the book is\ end {document}. Your layout should always end with this.

LaTeXila is easy to use and has a full range of formulas.

LaTeX is a command-based document generation system that has little to do with the editor used. It is important to emphasize that LaTeXila provides a series of powerful tools to save you some time and energy when writing reports or books. For example, for the LaTex command, it provides automatic completion, which will be activated each time you start typing a command.

Mathematical Formula in LaTeX

LaTeXila also integrates a gspell-based spelling detection system, so you can set the appropriate language in the tools menu at the top. The top toolbar contains almost all the buttons you need. From left to right, you can add chapters, cross-references, resize characters, format selected parts, add unordered tables and mathematical functions, and so on. These can be entered manually, but it may be more convenient to do so by clicking the appropriate button.

For generating mathematical formulas, combined with the toolbar options on the sidebar, you can add the corresponding mathematical symbols with a single click. Click the "symbol" Symbols box in the sidebar on the left, and you can see the relevant symbol categories, such as "relational operator", "Greek alphabet", "operator" and so on. The following screenshot is an example of some symbols:

Greek alphabet and operator symbols

The graphical list of these symbols makes the generation of formulas and mathematical expressions as comfortable as walking in the park.

Convert .tex files to .rtf files

By default, LaTeXila saves your document as a standard .tex document, and we can use .tex documents to generate a "rich text" rich text format document that can be opened using a text editor like LibreOffice. To do this, we need to install a tool called latex2rtf, which is available in all Linux distributions. Open the virtual terminal in the directory where the text is located, and enter the name of the latex2rtf file, as follows:

Generate LaTeX documents from RTF documents

Of course, LaTeXila also provides its own build tools, which can be seen in the above toolbar or in the top panel (build). But I recommend latex2rtf to you in case they have some unexpected problems on other operating systems, such as not working properly on my system.

This is the end of the article on "how to use LaTeXila on Linux". I hope the above content can be of some help to you, so that you can learn more knowledge. if you think the article is good, please share it for more people to see.

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