The version 2.0 of the free LaTeX editor Texmaker has been released today. The most notable changes:

• a built-in pdf viewer has been added providing auto-refresh after a compilation,
• there’s a new option to the quick build command causing that Texmaker doesn’t launch a new instance of the dvi/ps/pdf viewer if the file is already opened,
• the tabular assistant is now complete,
• a new document can be directly created by copying an existing one,
• there’s a new wizard to set the “user quick build command”,
• the amsmath align tag has been added to the Math menu.

SyncTeX is not used.

The complete changelog can be found here. Click here for downloading versions for Linux, Mac OS X or Windows or source files.

This text is available in German. Dieser Text ist auch in Deutsch verfügbar.

The version 1.6.7 of LyX has been released. This maintenance release is the first to be supposed to run smoothly with Qt 4.6, that’s why the LyX developers encourage all users and distributors using Qt 4.6 to upgrade to this version.

For more information and download visit:

• the LyX Homepage,
• the announcement containing a list of changes and fixes,
• the download area.

This text is available in German. Dieser Text ist auch in Deutsch verfügbar.

The third alpha version of the upcoming TeXnicCenter 2.0 has been released. It is not stable, it may crash and it’s intended for testing only. Version 2.0 has been designed to work alongside TeXnicCenter Version 1.0, both can be used when installed in different directories.

Many issues of Alpha 2 have been fixed. For more information about improvements and known issues read the announcement of Tino Weinkauf and the TeXnicCenter Team.

The version 2 comes with a new logo: have a look at the TXC logo contest results to see the winner.

This text is available in German. Dieser Text ist auch in Deutsch verfügbar.

The maintenance release 1.6.6 of LyX has been published yesterday. It brings a lot of bug-fixes and improvements. Furthermore it provides new features like support for SVG images, for Aspell language varieties and the enchant spellchecker. The LyX team encourages all users to upgrade to this version.

For more information and download visit:

• the LyX Homepage,
• the announcement containing a very long list of changes,
• the download area.

This text is available in German. Dieser Text ist auch in Deutsch verfügbar.

Version 6.0 of the powerful LaTeX editor WinEdt has been released. WinEdt 6 is running on all non-legacy Windows versions: Windows 7, Vista, 2000 and XP. It has a long history - being developed in 1993 for Windows 3.1 it’s now supporting the latest TeX distributions MiKTeX 2.8 and TeX Live 2009 on modern Windows platforms. The interface has been improved but some awaited features like folding and unicode support will come later with version 6.1.
WinEdt is shareware and may be used for an evaluation period of 31 days with full functionality. After that trial period the editor will continue to work but issue reminding messages concerning a registration.

For more information and free download visit the WinEdt homepage.

This text is available in German. Dieser Text ist auch in Deutsch verfügbar.

After the beta release of 3.31 in October 2009 the actual Version 3.31 of the TeX/LaTeX-IDE WinShell has been released by Ingo H. de Boer yesterday. WinShell runs on Windows systems and provides project management, syntax highlighting, spell checking, BibTeX support, Unicode support, toolbars and many options.

New features of 3.31 compared to 3.30 are

• autocompletion for LaTeX commands and BibTeX labels,
• an update checker,
• splitting and joining of paragraphs,
• an option to enable or disable the BibTeX front-end,
• optional reloading of opened files at startup.

Further it’s using Scintilla 2.03 now and the BibTeX project window has been improved.

You can download it here or visit the WinShell Homepage for more information.

This text is available in German. Dieser Text ist auch in Deutsch verfügbar.

Today version 2.31 of TeXShop has been released. TeXShop is a free and open source TeX editor and previewer for Mac OS X written by Richard Koch. The new version requires at least System 10.4 (Tiger) but System 10.5 (Leopard) is strongly recommended.

Some of the changes in 2.31:

• The “goto error” feature has been improved. Now it’s highlighting the text right before the error (like reported by the TeX compiler) instead of an entire line containing the error making it easier to spot errors, especially when “soft wrapping” is used.
• The bug concerning the incorrectly drawn toolbar has been fixed as well as other known bugs.
• TeXshow now comes with a new SageTeX engine that’s easier to install and more efficient.
• Now the “Abort” command works also when ConTeXt is called. That bug of the previous version was fixed by using bash instead of tcsh as scripting language for the internal calling script.
• The typesetting can be canceled by a new menu item “Abort Typesetting”, a keyboard shortcut is provided too.
• Closing the preview window now closes also the pdf file. In previous versions closing the entire document or even quitting TeXshop itself had been necessary for it.
• Help sections, latexmk and French localization were slightly improved.
• The defective default KeyEquivalents.plist has been repaired.

To obtain further information visit

• the complete list of changes in 2.31,
• the download page,
• the TeXshop homepage.

This text is available in German. Dieser Text ist auch in Deutsch verfügbar.

The version 1.9.9 of the free LaTeX editor Texmaker has been released yesterday. Texmaker is now providing additionally:

• verbatim support in the syntax highlighting,
• shortcuts for the “next/previous latex error” commands,
• an “escape” shortcut to close the “find” panel,
• a new option for the user tags (see changelog or documentation),
• quick change of shortcuts by pressing the key sequence directly,
• inclusion of the blocks of a beamer document in the structure view.

The complete changelog can be found here. Click here for downloading versions for Linux, Mac OS X or Windows or source files.

This text is available in German. Dieser Text ist auch in Deutsch verfügbar.

The second Alpha version of the new TeXnicCenter 2.0 has been released today. It is not stable, very likely to crash and intended for testing only. It’s designed to work alongside TeXnicCenter Version 1, both can be used when installed in different directories.

Many issues of Alpha 1 have been fixed. For more information about improvements and known issues read the announcement of the TeXnicCenter Team.

This text is available in German. Dieser Text ist auch in Deutsch verfügbar.

The source code of EtherPad, a web-based word processor that allows people to work together in real-time, has been released by the developers. Now it’s possible to run EtherPad on other servers than just etherpad.com. Alternative servers like the swedish PiratePad have already been established.

This collaborative editor provides an update speed of twice a second making it very responsive. Though it’s a plain text editor it could be used to produce LaTeX code collaboratively. There are already semi-automatic solutions using perl and ruby. Together with an online compiler EtherPad could be a useful feature in LaTeX discussion forums helping to solve user’s problems and to develop solutions.