Best Editors for Latex and How to Comment/Revise Latex Documents with Visual Cues

 

Although I personally prefer using Microsoft Word for document and manuscript preparation, editing and revising, sometimes, you work in teams and with other individuals that may not necessarily be equipped with the skills to work with Word or just don't prefer to use Word and are much more productive and happier using Latex. 

To be fair, I do think that Latex documents are generally more polished and you end up with a more professional-looking document at the end. However, the code interface of the overall experience may not be appealing for everyone.

To that end, I wanted to share two of my favorite platforms for working with Latex files/folders when you come across such situations that you need to work with Latex files.

For web use, I prefer using https://www.overleaf.com/

This platform has a very user-friendly interface and it is packed with a lot of background services and tools that help you be more productive as quickly as you start using it. It also offers a good functionality that can meet most of your needs as a FREE user.

If you are an IEEE member, you can get access to the full version of overleaf (pro version) as a bonus perk of your IEEE membership. To take advantage of this benefit, visit. You can read more about it here Overleaf Collaborates with IEEE or use the following steps to connect your IEEE Collaborate account to Overleaf and take advantage of this benefit. {alertInfo}

A great add-on for this platform is https://www.writefull.com/

What Wrtiefull does for Overleaf is what Grammarly does for most other things but Overleaf or Latex in general. So if you use Grammarly for other writing help, Writefull can be very handy for your Latex-related uses (and other use-cases that Grammarly supports). It also comes with sufficient features for a FREE user. 

So the combination of these two can be very helpful when working with Latex files on the internet or through your browser, which you can have access to with a single click and internet connection.

Now if you were to use Latex editing on a computer, not necessarily on the web, then I like the https://www.texstudio.org/ 

I find that it offers a lot of features and functionalities with a simple user interface and it is FREE to use. It also can automatically download all required packages and libraries that are not installed on your computer for a document you just opened and trying to edit.

Now that my favorite software is identified, let's get into what you can do if you were to use revision/editing for a document that you are working on with other members of a team.

If you use Overleaf, it offers a paid option to work in teams and track all the changes and keep a record of all versions and revisions. But, if you prefer to stay Free of Charge, then there are packages you can use to manually mark changes and add comments and revisions for Latex files. 

During my search on the internet, I came across the package called {todonotes} for latex documents. To make your life easier, you can add the following section to your document 

%%============================================================================= I have added these packages for markups and comments and todonotes, so when done editing the document, remove these extra packages \usepackage[left=2.5cm,right=2.5cm]{geometry} \usepackage[colorinlistoftodos,prependcaption]{todonotes} \setlength {\marginparwidth }{2cm} \usepackage{color,soul} \usepackage{xargs} % Use more than one optional parameter in a new commands \newcommandx{\unsure}[2][1=]{\todo[linecolor=red,backgroundcolor=red!25,bordercolor=red,#1]{#2}} \newcommandx{\change}[2][1=]{\todo[linecolor=blue,backgroundcolor=blue!25,bordercolor=blue,#1]{#2}} \newcommandx{\info}[2][1=]{\todo[linecolor=green,backgroundcolor=green!25,bordercolor=green,#1]{#2}} \newcommandx{\improvement}[2][1=]{\todo[linecolor=Plum,backgroundcolor=Plum!25,bordercolor=Plum,#1]{#2}} \newcommandx{\thiswillnotshow}[2][1=]{\todo[disable,#1]{#2}} \pagestyle{plain} \pagenumbering{arabic} %%================================================================================ Here is the end of extra loaded packages and settings that are changed for todonotes and comments and markups {codeBox}

You can see examples of usage for these commands in this thread https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/178806

And once this is loaded in your document you can start commenting and adding notes to the document with a list at the end of the document containing all the notes you have put in the document 

\listoftodos[Notes] {codeBox}

You can read more about this in the full documentation here http://tug.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/todonotes/todonotes.pdf