Best alternative to MS Word Outline View? For LaTeX?

[Mander]

I'm in the process of switching from Word 03 on XP to LaTeX on Ubuntu for my PhD thesis. So far so good, but I really miss some of the features of Word's Outline View, specifically two things:

- automatic folding of different heading levels (e.g. section, subsection, paragraph in LaTeX) by clicking on the plus/minus sign, or selecting the level of detail you wish to view in the view menu or toolbar

- the ability to automatically select an entire section or sub-section by clicking on the appropriate place in the document map or selecting a folded section, and dragging it to a new location.

As far as I can tell, nothing I have tried so far will do this (Kile, LyX, OpenOffice, TeXMaker, Emacs with AUCTeX). Is there another program that I should try, or something that I'm missing?

[dvase]

- the ability to automatically select an entire section or sub-section by clicking on the appropriate place in the document map or selecting a folded section, and dragging it to a new location.


This functionality is on the Kile wishlist (http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=60305). Its status is "assigned", however it is also quite old. You could vote for it at the above link and maybe encourage the developers to give it a higher priority.

[bufsabre666]

office 2003 works pretty much perfectly under wine

[vrangforestillinger]

I thought this worked in TeXMakers structure-toolbox. But you are right, it doesn't. It would have been a good feature.

But: I know the programming IDE Eclipse has these features. Eclipse was originally intended for Java, but there are now numerous plugins for other languages. Including LaTeX: texlipse (http://texlipse.sourceforge.net/). I haven't tried this plugin myself though, but it might be worth checking out.

Eclipse is in the repos, there are install instructions on the texlipse-site.


office 2003 works pretty much perfectly under wine

But would one really want to write a PhD in Word? In LaTeX, one can focus on content and structure, letting the "professionals" (the LaTeX-compiler) take care of the layout.


BTW: There is an Education & Science-forum (edit: a section in Ubuntuforums) for these kind of questions.

[Mander]

Hey, thanks for the tip. I'll check it out.

The main reason why I don't want to use Word anymore is because of its uncanny ability to crash and/or start doing weird things at critical moments, like right before a deadline. I like the ability to easily customize things in Word, but I'm getting used to LaTeX.

[hugmenot]

You could do all that when editing in Vim (code folding of sections and figures, fold levels, yank+put of folded sections). But Vim is the opposite of a GUI tool.

[vrangforestillinger]

The main reason why I don't want to use Word anymore is because of its uncanny ability to crash and/or start doing weird things at critical moments, like right before a deadline.

Jupp, I remember the days when I used Word/OpenOffice under Windows 9x, constantly saving after every sentence after some very bad experiences.


I like the ability to easily customize things in Word, but I'm getting used to LaTeX.

Ah, LaTeX: Its like moving in with your girlfriend. You can tell you want this over there, but LaTeX ultimately decides where the figure should go..


You could do all that when editing in Vim.

Oh. I did not know that. But Im somehow not surprised...

:wq