Related Research Articles
LaTeX is a software system for document preparation. When writing, the writer uses plain text as opposed to the formatted text found in "What You See Is What You Get" word processors like Microsoft Word, LibreOffice Writer and Apple Pages. The writer uses markup tagging conventions to define the general structure of a document to stylise text throughout a document, and to add citations and cross-references. A TeX distribution such as TeX Live or MiKTeX is used to produce an output file suitable for printing or digital distribution.
In computer text processing, a markup language is metadata for annotating a document, which is visually distinguishable from how the user typically sees the document. It is used only for formatting the text, thus when the document is rendered for display, the markup language doesn't appear. The idea and terminology evolved from the "marking up" of paper manuscripts, which is traditionally written with a red pen or blue pencil on authors' manuscripts. Such "markup" typically includes both content corrections, and also typographic instructions, such as to make a heading larger or boldface.
TeX, stylized within the system as TeX, is a typesetting system which was designed and written by Donald Knuth and first released in 1978. TeX is a popular means of typesetting complex mathematical formulae; it has been noted as one of the most sophisticated digital typographical systems.
troff, short for "typesetter roff", is the major component of a document processing system developed by AT&T Corporation for the Unix operating system. troff and the related nroff were both developed from the original roff.
Desktop publishing (DTP) is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal ("desktop") computer. It was first used almost exclusively for print publications, but now it also assists in the creation of various forms of online content. Desktop publishing software can generate layouts and produce typographic-quality text and images comparable to traditional typography and printing. Desktop publishing is also the main reference for digital typography. This technology allows individuals, businesses, and other organizations to self-publish a wide variety of content, from menus to magazines to books, without the expense of commercial printing.
LyX is an open source, graphical user interface document processor based on the LaTeX typesetting system. Unlike most word processors, which follow the WYSIWYG paradigm, LyX has a WYSIWYM approach, where what shows up on the screen roughly depicts the semantic structure of the page and is only an approximation of the document produced by TeX.
GNU TeXmacs is a scientific word processor and typesetting component of the GNU Project. It was inspired by TeX and GNU Emacs, though it shares no code with those programs. TeXmacs does use TeX fonts. It is written and maintained by Joris van der Hoeven and a group of developers. The program produces structured documents with a WYSIWYG user interface. New document styles can be created by the user. The editor provides high-quality typesetting algorithms and TeX and other fonts for publishing professional looking documents.
BibTeX is reference management software for formatting lists of references. The BibTeX tool is typically used together with the LaTeX document preparation system. Within the typesetting system, its name is styled as . The name is a portmanteau of the word bibliography and the name of the TeX typesetting software.
ConTeXt is a general-purpose document processor. Like LaTeX, it is derived from TeX. It is especially suited for structured documents, automated document production, very fine typography, and multi-lingual typesetting. It is based in part on the TeX typesetting system, and uses a document markup language for manuscript preparation. The typographical and automated capabilities of ConTeXt are extensive, including interfaces for handling microtypography, multiple footnotes and footnote classes, and manipulating OpenType fonts and features. Moreover, it offers extensive support for colors, backgrounds, hyperlinks, presentations, figure-text integration, and conditional compilation. It gives the user extensive control over formatting while making it easy to create new layouts and styles without learning the low-level TeX macro language.
JabRef is an open-sourced, cross-platform citation and reference management software. It uses BibTeX and BibLaTeX as its native formats and is therefore typically used for LaTeX. The name JabRef stands for Java, Alver, Batada, Reference. The original version was released on November 29, 2003.
Zotero is a free and open-source reference management software to manage bibliographic data and related research materials. Notable features include web browser integration, online syncing, generation of in-text citations, footnotes, and bibliographies, as well as integration with the word processors Microsoft Word, LibreOffice Writer, and Google Docs. It is developed as a project by the non-profit Corporation for Digital Scholarship. It was originally created at the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.
Scribe is a markup language and word processing system that pioneered the use of descriptive markup. Scribe was revolutionary when it was proposed, because it involved for the first time a clean separation of presentation and content.
The following tables compare notable reference management software. The comparison includes older applications that may no longer be supported, as well as actively-maintained software.
BibDesk is an open-source reference management software package for macOS, used to manage bibliographies and references when writing essays and articles. It can also be used to organize and maintain a library of documents in PDF format and other formats. It is primarily a BibTeX front-end for use with LaTeX, but also offers external bibliographic database connectivity for importing, a variety of means for exporting, and capability for linking to local documents and automatically filing local documents. It takes advantage of many macOS features such as AppleScript and Spotlight.
CiteProc is the generic name for programs that produce formatted bibliographies and citations based on the metadata of the cited objects and the formatting instructions provided by Citation Style Language (CSL) styles. The first CiteProc implementation used XSLT 2.0, but implementations have been written for other programming languages, including JavaScript, Java, Haskell, PHP, Python, Ruby and Emacs Lisp.
TeX4ht is a configurable converter capable of translating TeX and LaTeX documents to HTML and certain XML formats. Most notably, TeX4ht serves for converting (La)TeX documents to formats used by word processors. It was developed by Eitan M. Gurari.
Biber is a bibliography information processing program and works in conjunction with the LaTeX package BibLaTeX and offers full Unicode support.
Citavi is a program for reference management and knowledge organization for Microsoft Windows published by Swiss Academic Software in Wädenswil, Switzerland. Citavi is very widely used in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, with site licenses at most universities, many of which offer training sessions and settings files for Citavi.
Pandoc is a free and open-source document converter, widely used as a writing tool and as a basis for publishing workflows. It was created by John MacFarlane, a philosophy professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
TexLab is a TeX editor based on parallel programming. Contrary to other TeX editors which use a text file as input, TexLab was designed to process small binary document modules. TexLab typesetting engine is implemented by a thread pool to execute MiKTeX commands, such as: LaTeX, XeTeX or pdfTeX. MiKTeX is the version of LaTeX for Microsoft Windows; it consists of a set of tools to process text. Christian Schenk is the creator of MiKTeX, he studied Computer Science at TU Berlin. When Christian owned his first PC, he began working on a fun project; this project eventually became MiKTeX. TexLab interacts with Windows API's and Win32 through a thin level of abstraction provided by the C++ classes of Wintempla. TexLab interacts with MiKTeX commands through Anonymous pipes which is an interprocess communication (IPC) method.
References
- Inside the AMS, Notices of the AMS, volume 51, number 9, p. 1079.
