I have tried (I think) all the non-commercial ones listed here. TeXnicCenter ^[1] seems to be promising. Here are some details:

Texmaker ^[2]: One little annoyance was that the editor font seems to be fixed to be Courier (I find "Consolas" or "Bitstream Vera Sans Mono" are better). But apart from that it seems to be nice, and I would try it next after TeXnicCenter.

MeWa ^[3]: (used to be LaTeXEditor) Couldn't find a way to change the editor font from Courier. Also, development seems to have stopped in 2007. Otherwise it seems similar to Texmaker and TeXnicCenter on first inspection.

TexMacs ^[4]: Gave up on getting this to install properly after some trying. Possibly it isn't really a LaTeX editor, and development seems to have stopped a while ago (possibly in 2003?).

TeXlipse ^[5]: One of the harder ones to install---first you need to install Eclipse and then add TeXlipse to it. Also the interface has a lot of C/C++ functions in addition to the TeXlipse ones, cluttering it somewhat. But I got it to work, and if one is already using Eclipse, it may be the TeX editor of choice.

LEd ^[6]: The version I downloaded turned out to be buggy (its built-in dvi-viewer displayed only a few random dots). I did try a little (including downloading a dll recommended on the web page) without success.

TeXworks ^[7]: Actually the first one that I tried (it came with MiKTeX ^[8]). Has one or two annoying features: The font display of the editor on my screen is somehow not clean, and it doesn't have any built in Latex knowledge (for generating (La)TeX commands/symbols with menus/buttons).

LyTeX ^[9]: This is the heftiest download (99MB) but it contains a full TeX distribution ( TeX Live ^[10]). Maybe one can download it without that and point it to MiKTeX ^[11], but at least that’s not what happened when I did the most direct thing. Has a fancy and possibly quite nice view of the document (half WYSIWYG intermixed with collapsible TeX commands). But it couldn't handle my (not overly complicated) Latex source files and I gave up after a while.

LyX ^[12]: I downloaded the standard Windows installer. It takes quite a while to install (10 minutes on my fast computer letting MiKTeX ^[13] fetch several packages). Then I found out that it is just LyTeX (and still could not TeX my files).

TeXnicCenter ^[14]: This is the one I am going to try first. It was fairly easy to install, but as for many or most of the other editors, the configuring for the PDF viewer was a little cumbersome. I ended up with a good solution however with SumatraPDF ^[15], described here ^[16]. TeXnicCenter seems to be quite well configurable.

Emacs ^[17]: I shall not write about that (it may well be the best, but the installation and learning will take some time). Also I might point out that the current TeX distribution that comes with Cygwin seems to be broken.

Scite ^[18]: This is a general purpose editor (for lots of different (programming) languages) that seems to be quite nice. I didn't however go all the way to set it up for LaTeX use. It seems plausible that it can be set up to behave similarly to TeXworks. Then it will have lots more editing features (regular expressions etc.) but not any built-in LaTeX knowledge

WinShell ^[19]: This one actually resolves some of the inconveniences of other top editors on this list, while maintaining many similarly useful tools. It is able to use variable spaced font (as opposed to TeXnicCenter) and change background color (as opposed to TexMaker), and contains the navigation/project panel that help you get around a big document.

Vim ^[20]: Yes I told a lie, I didn't try them all

You ask like there was a choice other than Emacs. Weird.

I use TeXNic Center ^[1] and it is quite good. No complaints.

Scientific Workplace ^[2] is good too but its a commercial product so I prefer the free one.

I really like LEd ^[1] for its layout, where you have your code on one side and the resulting PDF on the other, with the ability of clicking directly in the PDF and get the cursor at the corresponding position in the code (and vice-versa).

I use WinEdt ^[1]. It has helpful toolbar which contains many symbols as well. What is useful for me is one button configurable compilation and viewing feature. Also text coloring makes work more convenient.

Texmaker ^[1] has served me well before

I've had decent experience with LyX ^[1], but it has some quirks.

Although others have joked about it, the AucTeX mode in emacs really is one of the most powerful TeX editors around. preview-latex is something of a revelation.

If you use Eclipse for your programming, you might want to take a look at Texlipse ^[1]. Works well for me.

Inlage ^[1] has a very nice autocompletion ^[2] and supports the tablet features of Windows 7.

BaKoMa TeX ^[1] is the only editor that gives you a true realtime view of the output. On one side you have the source and on the other the compiled LaTeX document, so it is not just a preview but actually the real thing. Any change to the source will immedently be visible in the preview (even if the there are errors, e.g. if the math environment has not been closed yet). You can also edit in the preview, the cursors in the source and the preview are synchronized. For me this is a killer feature and I would never go back to an editor without these realtime capabilities. It also works with nearly all LaTeX packages and the LaTeX system itself is excellent as well.

It runs under Windows, and there are now also versions for Mac and Linux.

Unfortunately it is not free, but for me the licensing cost is well worth it. I have really become a fan and always wonder why not more people use it.

You can't beat TeXWorks ^[1] (cross-platform but inspired by TeXShop for Mac) for simplicity and convenience; has the usual amenities including a built-in PDF viewer; supports synctex ^[2] (with modern TeX distributions) so you can jump back and forth between arbitrary locations in source and PDF output.

I recommend Led ^[1] for novice users and vim for more advanced.

LED, Emacs, Vim, BaKoMa TeX and Kile would get my vote. Personally I use the text editor that ships with BaKoMa, I find the visual product OK but you will find yourself jumping in and out of the visual tool and its text source often if you are doing anything half complex.

I'm fairly new into the whole LaTeX business, but I have had some good experiences with WinShell ^[1], although I'm not quite happy with the code-coloring in the program. It isn't capable of distinguishing anything inside $'s (math-mode or display-mode), and therefore when I type out long equations things can get a bit confusing to look at. I just now switched to TeXnicCenter ^[2] after looking at what is (currently) the top post, and I must say--I'm quite impressed. I was also giving WinEdt ^[3] a try, but it doesn't really look to be worth even the 30 dollars that I would have to pay (I'm a student).

I used LyX ^[4] last semester before I figured out any of the LaTeX business, but I'm not quite sure if I'd really recommend it--it is fine for the casual user, but if you are doing any serious mathematical-typesetting, you are going to want the full power of editors like TeXnicCenter... Maybe some day I will be worthy of giving Vim ^[5] a try (it has been recommended to me all over the place), but it is still completely unintelligible as of yet

Gummi is the best LaTeX editor. It is free and open source, featuring a live preview pane.

There's no Windows version available right now, though. But they do have announced one.

http://gummi.midnightcoding.org/

I found a greate free tool called LaTeXPiX ^[1] that presents you with a canvas and drawing tools that allow you to design figures. You can preview the figures in PDF and then output to LaTeX code when you are done.

If you use windows, WinEDT is probably the only way to go and well worth the registration price (it is not freeware, unlike TeXShop for the mac).

A great advantage of WinEDT is its support for multiple files. I wish TeXShop had it.

If you are an programmer and familiar with Eclipse environment, I suggest Texplipse because it is so nice and flexible. For instance, you can define auto-completions or auto-corrections. Furthermore, you can control all your documents easily. By using an SVN or CVS repository, more than one person can work on a single Tex file at the same time.

Suggest all to use.

Kind Regards,

FY

gVim and batch files for automation.

Kile for Linux, TeXShop for Mac, LatexEditor (LEd) and WinEdit for Windows. If you need unicode in Windows, then TeXMaker is a good choice. TexWorks seems promising but has a long way to go. I LOVE Kile, but the windows installation is not that straight forward. So I use LEd in windows, but its problem is that it is not opensource and the developers seem to have planned to make some money out of it at some point and when they did not, they stopped developing it.

Come on people, you can't mention (La)TeX editors without bringing up emacs!

No-one seems to bring up TeXmacs, so I will.

I used Texmaker and LEd throughout my academic life. Texmaker is very managable and cross platform.

WinShell is pretty good. It's free. The developer is always making it better and responds to the questions in the forum pretty quickly. I have been using it for 2 years now. You can compile and view the pdf. When there is an error, it takes you the error number.

I only consider the free software. On a Linux machine nothing can beat Kile. It is so good. Toolboxes are great, it has auto complete feature both for the commands and the words which are frequently used in the document. You don't have to define abbreviations for the looong latex commands. You get soo fast while writing... Awesome! Unfortunately, I don't know a latex editor as good as Kile for windows. That's why I ended up in this website. Apparently, nobody knows a really good one. There many editors, like Texniccenter and LEd, which are just ok, but nothing comparable to Kile. Too bad...

EDIT: Kile runs on Windows under KDE for Windows project: windows.kde.org

I tried many Latex editors and when I started using Texmaker, I thought I found perfect Latex editor. One thing that I missed in Texmaker was GUI/editor customization. I changed my mind when I came across TexStudio (Texmaker fork which can be found on http://texstudio.sourceforge.net). Now I am sure that is the best LaTeX editor I have used.

It has following advantages: 1. Great functionality of Texmaker 2. Full editor customization 3. UTF support 4. It is free 5. It is portable because it is written in Qt 6. It is still being developed

Really great editor, I use it almost everyday.

Before I knew better I wrote a quite large document using Notepad. Now I use Scite ^[1] for all my editing, including LaTeX. It has color coding and makes it possible to compile from within the tool, but no fancy toolbars I'm afraid.

I always liked LaTexEditor (now known as MeWa) for it's simplicity: http://www.meshwalk.com/latexeditor/

I used to work with LEd and it was fine. If you're using LaTeX a lot, you won't need those fancy preview options, but you will definitely need a lot of good shortcuts, and as many in-editor macros as possible. See, the problem with LEd was that I used an extreme lot of in-source macros like 'R' for 'mathbb(R)', and after the hundredth macro, no one but me could understand the source, which is definitely not that good. Now I began to use Vim, and it's wicked sick, but I still have to get used to it, and yes, it's not that comfortable for the beginner. But remember: when you first used LaTex, it wasn't comfortable either, now you're addicted to it. Or at least I hope so.

I'm with bkarak. :)

I like to use vim from DOS. I have a batch file for pdflatex.exe in my path. It's not really a frontend, but LaTeX is easy to pick-up. WinEdt, TechnicCenter and a configured TextPad aren't bad, either.

Depends what other source code you write and under which environments.

I use emacs because it has a mode for editing/running R scripts and I work on Windows and Linux. Emacs looks the same on whatever platform (In the past I have used it on Burroughs mainframes, Prime minicomputers, Sun workstations, Macs and DOS. You don't think OS's will change much in the future?)

If you are writing books then AUCTeX is brilliant. Keeps track of multiple subject, author indices, as well as the figure and table indices with support from the necessary LaTeX packages.

I would recommend TeXnic Center. I used before LED but I realizes it has some bugs. Then, I tried TexMaker which is quite ok, but when it comes to citation then you have to open back the .bib file to copy paste the label and referencing of equations in different section, then you should copy paste as well from the file.

TeXnic has a good navigator toolbar that all the entries of .bib are available, you don't need to save your file, and the toolbar also provide a list of all equations in your document.

may be the only drawbac of TeXnic is it does not have template for bibtex. But this is not a big issue, because it is very easy to learn and master.

M

It seems nobody has an answer and realistic comparison. How many of us has time to write down the code for the sake of getting good type setting? Lyx worked well with me. Texnikcenter and winshell will have their advovates. But what I use is LyTex, downloaded from google-code. Have a look.

I just tried (I think) all the commercial ones listed here. I am going to try out TeXnicCenter some more---it seems to be most promising. I intend to come back with some details.

I like browser-based LaTeX-Editors such as http://www.verbosus.com They allow me to store and manage my projects at one place (online) and I don't have to install any software to use LaTeX. Since verbosus offers (custom) templates, syntax-highlighting, code completion and HTTPS it gives me all I need...

all the editors seem to be more or less the same for me... as for viewing the resulting .eps, i strongly recommend using evince for windows..not only is it fast, it automatically updates the created pdf every time it changes, so you can have it open in split screen mode and just compile and evince will display the updated .pdf or .dvi.. have fun with that

I like to use Emacs for editing LaTeX files in windows.