RTextDoc

RTextDoc is an open source, smart, feature rich, freely downloadable and cross-platform graphical application implemented in Java and designed from the ground up to act as a LaTeX and TeX editor.

Features at a glance

Key features include on-the-fly spelling with support for over 20 languages, an instant grammar checker, integrated offline dictionaries, syntax highlighting support, section folding support, as well as support for line numbers.

In addition, the software comes with many other attractive features, such as bracket matching, text formatting, a document structure browser, a manager for symbols and tags, support for bookmarks, and a manager for BibTex entries.

A WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) equation editor, built-in fast PDF (Portable Document Format) viewer, LaTeX to HTML converter, HTML to LaTeX converter, LaTeX to MathML and LaTeX to XML converter are also included.

Is mainly based on the RText application

RTextDoc is mainly based on the RText programmer's editor application, but it also includes functionality from other similar projects, including SCaVis, LanguageTool, JabRef, DragMath, ICEpdf (community) edition, Snuggletex, and JSlovo.

Requires no installation

The application requires no installation, just download the latest release from either Softoware or the project’s official website (see the homepage link at the end of the review), save the ZIP archive on a location of your choice, extract it using any archive manager utility, open the outputted ‘RTextDoc’ folder and double click on the rtextdoc.jar file. Alternatively, you can drop to a shell prompt and run the ‘java -jar rtextdoc.jar’ command to start the program.

Runs on GNU/Linux, Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X

Being written in Java, RTextDoc is a platform-independent application that runs on any operating system where the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) technologies are supported, including all GNU/Linux distributions, as well as Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X, supporting both 64 and 32-bit computer platforms.

What is new in this release:

• This release fixes a number of bugs in automatic detection of LaTeX, editing features and Linux support. If you are happy with Release 1.9, you may not need to update it.

What is new in version 1.9:

• This release includes a LaTeX draw tool to draw figures and generate PSTricks output.

What is new in version 1.8:

• This is a maintenance release with small bugfixes.
• ctags for Windows was added.

What is new in version 1.7:

• The main PDF viewer has been replaced with JPedal, since icePDF OS has issues rendering fonts.
• This release improves support for the AsciiDoc markup language.

What is new in version 1.6:

• Support for AsciiDoc markup language is added. ASciiDoc is powered by the AsciiDoctor engine.
• The following features for AsciiDoc are added: a document structure browser, and conversions to DocBook, HTML, and PDF.

What is new in version 1.4:

• This maintenance release added a convenient LaTeX launch menu and an output panel.

What is new in version 1.3:

• Autodetection of Latex environment.
• Autodetection of LaTeX errors during compilation.
• A new toolbar for quickly launching Latex commands.

What is new in version 1.2:

• This version supports external dictionaries to look up a word definition, adds converters from LaTeX to HTML and back for basic LaTeX documents, and fixes several bugs.

Requirements:

• Java 2 Standard Edition Runtime Environment