I have started maintaining three packages, namely Texmaker, TeXworks and Rubber, in the Publishing repository. These applications make working with and compiling latex documents user-friendly and painless.

Texmaker

This is a frontend for editing latex documents much like kile (which is distributed with openSUSE 11.3 and prior), with several useful features:

• integrated pdf viewer
• user-friendly interface based on qt
• wizards to generate code
• integrated error and warning viewer
• an integrated LaTeX to html conversion tool
• based on qt with no dependence on kde libraries, which means somebody using a non-kde desktop might install it without pulling in one big chunk of the kde base  (as a GNOME user, I find this to be a problem with kile), and so integrates well with a non-KDE desktop as well.

Install on openSUSE

openSUSE 11.2 (from my home project, this requires libqt4 >= 4.6.1)

openSUSE 11.3

Factory

TeXworks

Also based on the qt toolkit, TeXworks is a Latex frontend with an integrated viewer that supports source/preview synchronisation. This makes it possible for you to right-click on the embedded preview [pdf, ps, etc] and choose to go to the corresponding line/paragraph in the latex source. I think, but I am not sure, that TeXworks is the only Linux application which uses source/preview synchronisation at present.

Install on openSUSE

openSUSE 11.2

openSUSE 11.3

Factory

Rubber

Rubber is a command line application that automates compilation of latex documents, in the sense that it takes care of getting cross-referencing, citations and so on just right with one run, while it takes the native texlive commands (latex/pdflatex) as many as four runs to do so. Rubber makes the process of compiling a source file into the final document completely automated including processing bibliographic references or indices, as well as compilation or conversion of figures and several post-processing work.

Install on openSUSE

openSUSE 11.2

openSUSE 11.3

Factory

Here’s hoping latex users (esp. beginners) on openSUSE will find these applications useful.

Have a lot of fun.

Bye.

——-

Update: The command latexmk works similar to rubber (i.e. running latex/pdflatex as many times as necessary to get the cross-referencing right), while kile/okular can be configured for source/document synchronisation similar to texworks as pointed out in the comments.