Publishing High-Quality Documents with Kile

Discerning typesetters have long relied on Tex and LaTeX for impeccable-looking documents. Now they have a front-end that works under Linux and BSD and brings control of the compilers and related utilities under the comprehensive graphical user interface. Authors and editors who use Kile can get increased productivity in the document creation business. This article will highlight some of Kile's key features which make it so attractive to newcomers to LaTeX.

Beginning at the beginning

Typesetting in LaTeX takes the user through several stages on the way to the ultimate document. First, the user prepares a LaTeX file or files using a text editor, checking syntax and the LaTeX commands and keywords. The next step is compiling the prepared LaTeX document, followed by reading of error messages and taking necessary actions on their correction, before compiling the document again. Once the error messages are gone, check the document visually and, if necessary, revise the input file again. For example, edit the file to chane settings for an image or table formatting, then compile the LaTeX file once more.

When, after several iterations, everything is finally arranged as desired, the document can be printed or stored into electronic formats including the "device-independent format" (DVI), Postscript, PDF or HTML. This is done with the traditional utilities, including dvi2ps, dvi2pdf, and latex2html.

LaTeX is a document preparation system based on the TeX typesetting language. TeX, LaTeX, and related tools are integrated into the teTeX distribution, maintained by Thomas Esser. But although the tools are easy to install and available on all the common Linux distributions, the process can appear discouraging to many new LaTeX users. Yet, the exceptional typographical quality of the created documents is well worth the effort. But that is not to say that the TeX and LaTeX community should be deprived of the benefits offered by the graphical working environments. Under Linux and BSD, a quest for increased productivity in typesetting with LaTeX has led to several popular programs that integrate the features of the compilers with numerous stand-alone utilities from the teTeX distribution.

Competition among LaTeX front ends, a Software Darwinism theory, could explain why Kile (KDE Integrated LaTeX Editor, latest stable version 1.9.3) is a number one choice for many existing users. It is fair to say that the term "LaTeX editor" does not do all the justice to Kile in view of its distinctive set of features. Instead, we could refer to it as a complex, yet easy to use, working environment that, among other things, centralizes access to LaTeX and related tools, including Postscript and PDF translators.

Kile is published under GPL, and source code can be downloaded from the Kile home page. Debian GNU/Linux users can, of course, most readily fetch Kile with:

sudo apt-get install kile

Kile is also packages for Ubuntu and for RPM-based distributions including OpenSUSE, Mandriva, and Fedora. Check your distribution's package manager, or search rpmfind.net.