Gedit is shipped with the distribution. Installing the latex plugin, rubber and chktex could be an alternative way to work with latex and to create pdf files. This a way for more advanced user. Meanwhile the developing of a more advanced version has been started with "LatexPlugin2"

Note: The linux4afrika team decides which packages will be installed for you server configuration.

Download and Install

wget -c http://kent.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/gedit-latex/LaTeXPlugin-0.1.3.1.tar.gz

tar xzvf LaTeXPlugin-0.1.3.1.tar.gz

cd /usr/lib/gedit-2/plugins

sudo cp -R ~/Desktop/LaTeXPlugin .
sudo cp -R ~/Desktop/LaTeXPlugin.gedit-plugin .

sudo aptitude install rubber chktex

Legend:

rubber - an automated system for building LaTeX documents
chktex - Finds typographic errors in LaTeX
optionally: sam2p - convert raster images to EPS, PDF, and other formats

Configure

Start gedit an go to the menu Edit->Preferences->Plugins. Now activate the plugins "Latex" and "Tag list". Close and reopen gedit and you will find a new menu called LateX and on the left side the tag list bar. After you choose a new Latex document you will get a new menu with the most common latex commands.

If you work in a latex document you will positive notice the code completion feature.

The tag list

The latex tag list is already shipped with the package gedit-plugins

The tag list provides a method to easily insert into a document commonly used tags/strings for html, xhtml, latex and some other without having to type them.

Using code snippets

A great help is the snippet plugin. You can save own latex code snippets and insert them in the actual tex file as soon as you need them trough a tab trigger or a shortcut key. This kind of work is efficient and fast

To define a new snippet go trough the menu Tools->Manage Snippets->Latex->New

Using Templates

You will find a few templates under /usr/lib/gedit-2/plugins/LaTeXPlugin/templates

You can edit the template named "default" and add often used packages and settings.

If you need more templates copy them from the folder /usr/share/apps/kile/templates