TeXstudio, a writing environment for creating LaTeX documents

In the next article we are going to take a look at TeXstudio. This is a Integrated writing environment for creating LaTeX documents. Its main goal is to make writing LaTeX as easy and comfortable as possible. For this reason, TeXstudio offers users numerous functions such as syntax highlighting, an integrated viewer, reference checking, and various wizards, among others.

TeXstudio has been created by Texmaker due to the development process of texmaker and the different philosophies regarding configurability and features. It was originally called TeXmakerX because it started as a little set of extensions for Texmaker in the hope that one day they would be integrated into it.

While we can still see that TeXstudio originates from Texmaker, significant changes in the features and the code base have made it a completely independent program. TeXstudio runs on Windows, Gnu / Linux, BSD and Mac OSX among other systems. It is licensed under the GPL v2.

General characteristics of TeXstudio

TeXstudio has many useful and necessary functions to edit or create TeX / LaTeX source code, some of them would be:

• Autocomplete LaTeX command. When you type any Math / LaTeX command, the editor suggests what should come next and automatically completes the command.
• Syntax coloring. TeXstudio automatically marks LaTeX commands and highlights parentheses for clearer writing.
• It will allow us to use markers.
• It will allow us different customizations in the user interface.
• Offers users script support.
• We will be able to access many LaTeX tags already more than 1000 math symbols.
• We will be able to go directly to the places of error.
• They will be at our disposal wizards for images, tables, formulas, etc..
• It will provide us with support from drag and drop for images.
• In order not to start our projects from scratch, we will have a template system.
• Interactive grammar and spell checker. The program will automatically check for spelling errors and provide suggestions for them.
• Clear display of LaTeX errors and warnings (in editor and as list).
• We will be able to use the built-in pdf viewer and continuous display mode.
• Live preview update for formulas and code segments.
• Integration with bibliography managers BibTeX and BibLaTeX.
• We can export our LaTeX document (ODT or HTML format).

These are just some of the features that this program offers to users. Who needs to know all the features of this program, you can consult them in the project website, within the section FEATURES.

Install TeXstudio

Before proceeding with the installation, it must be said that the program that will remind us when we start it that if we intend to work with LaTeX on our system, we should install a LaTeX distribution. If we do not have it installed, the program will not allow us to compile our documents to the desired output format (like .pdf for example).

We can install this program in different versions of Ubuntu. For this we will have to go to the download page. In this case I am testing it on Ubuntu 16.04 so I'm going to select one of the .deb packages available for this version.

Once the download is finished, you just have to install from the option of Ubuntu software or open a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) and type the following to start the installation of the program:

sudo dpkg -i texstudio-qt4_2.12.6-2_amd64.deb

If when launching the previous command, we see errors during installation, we should solve them by typing in the same terminal:

sudo apt-get install -f

Uninstall TeXstudio

We can remove this program from our computer by opening a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) and typing in it:

sudo apt remove texstudio-qt4 && sudo apt autoremove

To solve the possible questions that users may ask us about how to work with this tool, we can consult the user manual that we will find in sourceforge. We will also have at our disposal the section  F.A.Q. to resolve doubts.