Emacs with AUCTeX — emacs auctex

• 
  Platforms: Windows, Mac (incl. Aquamacs fork), Unix


• 
  License: Free software (GPL)


• 
  Languages: de, dk, fr, is, it, jp, nl, pl, se, sk are supported by AUCTeX language styles


• 
  Unicode: Yes, from Emacs 23, characters are represented using Unicode


• 
  RTL/bidirectional support: From Emacs 24, through bidi-mode
  


• 
  % !TeX directives: No, but has several realizations of file local variables
  


• 
  Syntax highlighting: Yes, customisable through customize and Elisp


• 
  Code completion: Yes


• 
  Code folding: Yes


• 
  Spell checking: Yes


• 
  SyncTeX: Yes


• 
  Built-in output viewer: Yes


• 
  Project management: org-mode, reftex-mode, speedbar
  

Emacs is one of the oldest programmable editors, which has basic support for TeX and friends. AUCTeX is a plugin to Emacs which provides a much more advanced support for editing LaTeX, ConTeXt, docTeX, Texinfo, and Plain TeX documents. It comes with a sophisticated auto-completion mechanism for environments and commands, supporting by default more than two hundreds LaTeX packages (but virtually any package can be automatically parsed in order to provide autocompletion for its commands and environments).

(In this screenshot, visual-line-mode is enabled. In this mode, lines that are wider than the window are broken between words. The line breaks are not added to the source file.)

RefTeX is another plugin to Emacs, independent from and complementary to AUCTeX, which aids you with the management of bibliographic sources. It makes all your references as easy to find as a C-c <key>, for both BibTeX and biblatex, and also provides convenient shortcuts for navigating between sections in your document, bound by default to C-c =:

(Note that colour themes are completely customizable)

AUCTeX supports multi-file parsing, so that huge documents with input or include commands are easily compiled with C-c C-c from any of their files. No more going back to the master file in order to compile.

AUCTeX's preview-latex offers WYSIWYG previewing of formulae.

Interesting features of Emacs:

• Use table-insert along with table-generate-source and table-recognize-* functions to easily create a base for your tables.


• Lots of useful keyboard shortcuts


• Extensively documented, both in Emacs, via the Emacs and AUCTeX Texinfo manuals, and via many books in several languages.


• Supports most of vim's features and keybindings through evil-mode.

TeXstudio — texstudio

(formerly TexMakerX)

• 
  Platforms: Windows XP/Vista/7/8/10, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD


• 
  License: GPL v2


• 
  Languages: cs, de, en, es, fr, hu, ja, pl, pt_BR, ru, vi, zh_CN


• 
  Unicode: Yes


• 
  RTL/bidi: experimental


• 
  % !TeX directives: Yes


• 
  Syntax Highlighting: Yes, customizable


• 
  Code Completion: Yes, customizable and auto-customized


• 
  Code Folding: Yes


• 
  Spell Checking: Yes, including grammar checking based on LanguageTool.


• 
  SyncTeX: Yes


• 
  Built-in Output Viewer: Yes, supports PDF


• 
  Project Management: Yes

I'd recommend TeXstudio an interesting fork of Texmaker that I find more usable and customizable.

Here is a screen shot of TeXStudio.

Other pros:

• cross-platform,


• writing support (incr. search, folding, navigation, auto-completion, custom macros)


• inline interactive spell-checking


• support to the main latex tools, including tikz, pstricks, etc.


• multi-views: math, structure


• svn support


• runs in a usb


• pdf viewer included, but can be configured to use external viewers (also with synctex)


• live-updating inline preview for formulas and code segments


• tools for easy table editing and table-code formatting


• multiple cursors


• smart BibTeX auto-complete (including multiple, comma-separated citations) and hovering on cite text shows a preview of the BibTeX entry


• document templates


• very active and responsive developer and community


• adjustable icon size makes it suitable for high resolution displays (preferences->show advanced options->gui scaling)

Cons:

• Does not support split editor

Vim with LaTeX-suite — vim latex-suite

• 
  Platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux and others


• 
  License: Open Source Charityware


• 
  Languages: ?
  


• 
  Unicode: Yes


• 
  RTL/bidi support: partially
  


• 
  % !TEX directives: No, but has modelines
  


• 
  Syntax Highlighting: Yes, customizable


• 
  Code Completion: Yes (using Omni Completion, extendable with SnipMate plugin)


• 
  Code Folding: Yes


• 
  Spell Checking: Yes


• 
  SyncTeX: Yes, see e.g. this question
  


• 
  Built-in Output Viewer: No


• 
  Project Management: ?
  

If you're really hardcore, you can always use Vim. There's a suite of macros and whatnot appropriate for Vim which can be used to edit LaTeX files.

You can have word/command completion via <C-P> and <C-N>, to go the previous and next matches, respectively.

There is a version of Vim with graphical menus, called gVim. If it is used with LaTeX-suite, then various TeX commands are displayed in the menu bar for quick insertion in the text. (For Mac, there is a native build called MacVim.)

Features

Vim also allows for code folding, the package vim-latex offers automatic code folding. Folding can also be done manually based on a key (e.g., {{{ and }}}) to open and close automatic folds. Example of folds can be seen as follows:

As per original question, some other useful features not listed elsewhere in this post include

VIM

• Regular Expressions


• Powerful keyboard short-cuts/commands


• Extremely customizable


• Smart Indenting

LaTeX-Suite

• Calling the compiler is quick with ll; viewing the result is lv
  


• Environments accessible with three letter sequences in insert mode:
  
  
  
  
  • 
    EEQ = equation environment
  
  
  • 
    EFI = figure environment
  
  
  
  


• Place-holders (<+text+>) can be jumped to with Ctrl-J without leaving insert mode


• Inverse searching: Double click in (supported) pdf viewer and you jump to corresponding tex source line

For issues, pull request and installation from github see here.

Texmaker — texmaker

• 
  Platforms: Windows XP/Vista/7/8, OS X 10.5+, Linux


• 
  License: GPL license, free


• 
  Languages: cs, de, el, en, es, fa, fr, gl, hu, it, nl, pl, pt, pt (bra), ru, se, sr, zh (cn), zh (tw)


• 
  Unicode: Yes


• 
  RTL/bidi: ?
  


• 
  % !TEX directives: No


• 
  Syntax Highlighting: Yes, customizable


• 
  Code Completion: Yes, customizable


• 
  Code Folding: Yes


• 
  Spell Checking: Yes


• 
  SyncTeX: Yes


• 
  Built-in Output Viewer: Yes, supports PDF


• 
  Project Management: Yes

Customizable code completion

Rectangular block selection

The editor TeXstudio started out as a fork of Texmaker and was originally called TexMakerX.

TeXworks — texworks

• 
  Platforms: Windows XP/Vista/7/8, OS X, Linux all pre-compiled plus source available


• 
  License: GPL


• 
  Languages: en, af, ar, ca, cs, de, fa, fo fr, it, ja, nl, ko, pl, pl, ru, sl, tr zh


• 
  Unicode: Yes


• 
  RTL/bidi: Yes


• 
  % !TEX directives: Yes


• 
  Syntax Highlighting: Yes, regex-based


• 
  Code Completion: Yes, customizable based on 'known entry' list


• 
  Code Folding: No


• 
  Spell Checking: Yes, but have to install by hand


• 
  SyncTeX: Yes


• 
  Built-in Output Viewer: Yes, PDF (Poppler-based, auto-follow option to scroll source and preview together)


• 
  Project Management: No

Screen shot of TeXworks on the Mac: the layout stays the same on Windows and Linux:

On Windows and Linux, I use TeXworks, which provides with an editor window and a document preview window. Clicking in the document preview locates the edit mark at that TeX source corresponding to the clicked location.

Kile — kile

• 
  Platforms: Linux, Windows¹ (XP, Vista, 7)


• 
  License: GNU GPL 2


• 
  Languages: bg, bs, ca, cs, da, de, el, en_GB, eo, es, et, fi, fr, ga, gl, hi, hne, hu, it, ja, kk, lt, mai, ms, nb, nds, nl, nn, pl, pt, pt_BR, ro, ru, sk, sv, tr, ug, uk, zh_CN, zh_TW


• 
  Unicode: Yes


• 
  RTL/bidi: Yes


• 
  % !TEX directives: No²
  


• 
  Syntax Highlighting: Yes, customizable


• 
  Code Completion: Yes, customizable


• 
  Code Folding: Yes


• 
  Spell Checking: Yes [uses system dictionaries so works even for unsupported languages]


• 
  SyncTeX: Yes (but the -synctex=1 flag must be added manually to the build engine)


• 
  Built-in Output Viewer: Limited³ (PNG preview of snippets – e.g. current environment or selection – converted from DVI/PS/PDF)


• 
  Project Management: Yes


• 
  Command Line: Yes


• 
  Structure/Outline View: Yes


• 
  VI Input Mode: Yes

¹ Starting from version 3.0, there is a windows installer available.
Installation instructions for 2.x versions can be found here.
The Windows version of the KDE applications is not finalised, so some of them may be unstable.

² While Kile does not have !TeX directives for defining compilation tool etc., it does have some "magic comments", similar to Latexila and TeXStudio. They are %TODO and %FIXME, which appears in the structure view, for adding notes in the code, and %BEGIN/%END for defining foldable regions of code.

³ A full built-in output viewer will be available in Kile 3 and is already available by compiling the Kile git master branch

Sublime Text with LaTeXTools plugin

Available for: Windows, Mac, Linux

This is a simple, but powerful, editor. It's similar to Notepad++, but available on multiple platforms, and much easier to setup for LaTeX with the LaTeXTools plugin, which is available from the Package Control tool. It is also similar to TextMate, but is being actively developed and has a huge community which develops plug-ins for. It's also much prettier than both of them!

Note that this commercial software, and inquires a licence after an evaluation period (costs $70 USD). It is possible to run Sublime Text without buying a licence, but you will be reminded that you are using an unregistered copy.

Sublime Text features some really powerful tools when it comes to typing, some of which you don't understand that you could do without:

• multiple cursors


• go-to anything


• snippets


• incremental find


• project management


• numerous build-systems

and more (take a look at Perfect Workflow in Sublime Text 2). The screenshot below also displays its feature for finding citations from BibTeX.

Sublime Text is an almost completely text based editor, with almost unlimited potential. The list of features is about as long as you want it to be. Install Package Manager, and you have a long list of repositories only a few seconds install-on-the-fly away.

• 
  Platforms: Windows, Mac, Unix


• 
  Licence: Free to try, free to buy


• 
  % !TEX directives: Yes


• 
  Syntax highlighting: Yes


• 
  Code completion: Yes


• 
  Code folding: Yes


• 
  Spell check: Yes, both built-in and external packages


• 
  SyncTeX: Yes


• 
  Built-in output viewer: No


• 
  Project management: Yes

TexShop

Available for: Mac

Open Source

In Mac I use TexShop, shipped with MacTeX, and works smoothly together with MacTeX.

Among the features that it has are:

Editing features

• syntax highlighting


• source/PDF synchronization


• autocompletion of commands and environments


• macros


• stationery (for document templates)


• latex panel of commonly used symbols


• matrix panel for simple array input


• import spreadsheet cells with LaTeX formatting


• regex search/replace

Processing features

• built-in support for TeX, LaTeX, Xe(La)TeX, Lua(La)TeX, ConTeXt, BibTeX, biber


• built-in support for Sketch, Asymptote, Sage, LilyPond, LatexMk, MetaPost


• user definable Engines (scripts to process documents)

TeXnicCenter — texniccenter

• 
  Platforms: Windows XP/Vista/7/8/10


• Open Source


• 
  Languages: English, German, more dictionaries for spelling control downloadable


• 
  Unicode: Yes (in version 2, which was released mid-september 2013).


• 
  RTL/bidi: ?
  


• 
  % !TEX directives: No


• 
  Syntax Highlighting: Yes, customizable (also background colour)


• 
  Code Completion: Yes


• 
  Code Folding: Yes


• 
  Spell Checking: Yes


• 
  SyncTeX: Yes


• 
  Built-in Output Viewer: No. You can config TeXnicCenter to use an external PDF viewer like Acrobat Reader or SumatraPDF with synchronized viewing.


• 
  Project Management: Yes

I highly recommend TeXnicCenter. It stands out because it is the right mix between a GUI heavy editor (think Lyx) and no GUI (think emacs). Moreover, it is very easy to setup on Windows; and it integrates with MiKTeX without requiring extra configuration.

An easy-to-navigate user interface provides a document tree, editor and compiling output as well as a vast array of drop-down menus:

^{Click image to enlarge}

Customizable profiles allow for manipulating of latex, bibtex and makeindex parameters, as well as post-processing features and viewer parameters (e.g. forward and backward search):

^{Click image to enlarge}

TeXnicCenter also allows to jump directly to the line that caused an error and provides code completion. TeXnicCenter has easy and integrated project management tools, and handles multiple files conveniently. It can be synchronized with pdf viewers such as Adobe Reader or SumatraPDF to provide forward and backward search options. Forward and backward search lets user jump and navigate between LaTeX code and pdf output seamlessly.

ShareLaTeX - Online LaTeX editor in your web browser.

Note: The companies behind ShareLaTeX and Overleaf have merged, and as such the two services will at some point in the future be merged into one. See https://www.overleaf.com/blog/518-exciting-news-sharelatex-is-joining-overleaf#.Wa_pdL8hWV4.

• Unlimited projects for free


• latex, pdflatex and XeLaTeX compilers


• Collaborate with others, see what they are typing in real time like Google documents


• Auto Complete


• Multi Language spell check


• Chat with online collaborators


• Export and import data


• Sync with Dropbox


• Regular snapshots allowing for rolling back


• Vim and Emacs Bindings


• Custom Themes


• Extensive inbuilt template library


• It's Open Source, so you can install it on your own server

LyX

Available for: Windows, Mac, and Linux

Open Source

I use LyX and I love it. From the webpage:

LyX is a document processor that encourages an approach to writing based on the structure of your documents (WYSIWYM) and not simply their appearance (WYSIWYG).
LyX combines the power and flexibility of TeX/LaTeX with the ease of use of a graphical interface. This results in world-class support for creation of mathematical content (via a fully integrated equation editor) and structured documents like academic articles, theses, and books. In addition, staples of scientific authoring such as reference list and index creation come standard. But you can also use LyX to create a letter or a novel or a theatre play or film script. A broad array of ready, well-designed document layouts are built in.

Quite intuitive and user-friendly, and it is possible to import from and (more importantly) export to LaTeX.

Too many useful features to mention, but I'll mention one that I find extra good: If you want to typeset a "2-dimensional" math expression, LyX is the way to go. I have used LyX for nearly ten years. Switched to AUCTeX recently, but I still use LyX whenever I want to get the LaTeX code for a complicated math expression.

WinEdt — winedt

• 
  Platforms: (Windows XP until version 9.1)/Vista/7/8/10


• 
  License: Shareware, personal license $60
  


• 
  Languages: en


• 
  Unicode: Yes (from version 7)


• 
  RTL/bidi: Yes (from version 10)


• 
  % !TEX directives: Probably possible.


• 
  Syntax Highlighting: Yes, customizable and including a .dtx mode


• 
  Code Completion: Yes, customizable


• 
  Code Folding: Yes, customizable (from version 8)


• 
  Spell Checking: Yes


• 
  SyncTeX: Yes with appropriate PDF viewer (e.g. SumatraPDF)


• 
  Built-in Output Viewer: No


• 
  Project Management: Yes, own project management system and outliner

A lot of useful add-ons for WinEdt can be found on the WinEdt's Community site

WinEdt is a good option on Windows.

I wrote a post on some of the features I liked in WinEdt 6.0.
To summarise:

• Tree View can be customised


• Automatically display your current location in TOC


• Colour coding that aids usability


• Intelligent defaults


• Options to customise almost anything


• Easy configuration interface with MikTeX


• One click build process for LaTeX documents


• Intuitive default shortcut keys and intuitive alt menu letters

It's not free, but it's also not that expensive.

WinEdt's new full Unicode support and its translation tables allow to show ∀α in the screen but to write {forall}{alpha} in the disk.

TeXlipse

Available for: Windows, Mac, Linux and others (Java based)

Open Source

I've been happily using TeXlipse in Eclipse for a long time, it has integrated code completion (including BibTeX entries), customizable templates, an outline view - and being integrated into Eclipse it includes all useful stuff I'm used to when working in Eclipse, like editor shortcuts, version control, etc.

There is also an Eclipse pdf viewer plugin Pdf4Eclipse with complete support of SyncTeX, which allows forward and reverse search in LaTeX documents. Since TeXlipse rebuilds the LaTeX sources automatically (in background) after a save, the code and the preview of the document are always synchronized.

^{Click image to enlarge}

Gummi

• 
  Platforms: Linux (unstable development version for Windows exists)
  


• 
  License: Open Source (MIT)


• 
  Languages: ar, ca, cs, da, de, el, es, fr, hu, it, nl, pl, pt, pt-BR, ro, ru, zh-CN, zh-TW


• 
  Unicode: Yes


• 
  RTL/bidi support: ?
  


• 
  % !TEX directives: Yes


• 
  Syntax Highlighting: Yes


• 
  Code Completion: No


• 
  Code Folding: No,


• 
  Spell Checking: Yes (liited


• 
  SyncTeX: Yes


• 
  Built-in Output Viewer: Yes


• 
  Project Management: Yes

Emacs is great, but what I generally use is Gummi. It has a 2-pane live preview which is really useful for catching syntax errors and formatting errors early on. Plus, when you save your latex document it will automatically save a pdf copy. Other features include helpers for matrix and table editing, inserting images, and a citing tool. Even better, there are configurable snippets of code. For example just writing "item" + Tab write an itemize environment and the first item, and left the cursor after item.

It should be noted that Gummi really work with a hidden temporal copy as .file.tex.swp (instead that directly with file.tex) for previews, and the same happen with auxiliary files. This have the advantage that your working directory apparently remain clean but occasionally this can produce unexpected errors (e.g., using jobname in Gummi)

Notepad++

• 
  Platforms: Windows XP/Vista/7/8


• 
  License: Free software (GPL)


• 
  Languages: en, zh, fr, es, hu, ru, nl, pl, de, it, da, cs, sl, sk, uk, tr, pt, no, sv, ca, ar, lt, gl, fi, el, ro, ko, he, fa, sgs, bg, id, sq, ja, hr, ka, eu, be, sr, nn, th, ms, oc, fur, lb, tl, uz, kk, af, ky, mk, lv, ta, az, bs, eo, lij, hi, sc, ug, te, an, si


• 
  Unicode: Yes


• 
  RTL/bidi: Yes


• 
  % !TEX directives: No


• 
  Syntax Highlighting: Yes, customizable (also background color)


• 
  Code Completion: Yes, customizable


• 
  Code Folding: Yes


• 
  Spell Checking: Yes (through DSpellCheck)


• 
  SyncTeX: Yes


• 
  Built-in Output Viewer: No. You can configure notepad++ to use an external PDF viewer like Acrobat Reader or SumatraPDF with forward and backward searching.


• 
  Project Management: Yes (no master file)

I use Notepad++ and I love it. It has all the powerful features you expect from a good text editor (powerful find/replace, regex, macros, plugin support, etc.) and lots of features for coding, like syntax highlighting (and it has built-in rules for TeX), code folding, etc. The best part is that you can map keys to run external programs, so all you have to do is tap a bound key and it instantly runs your favorite compiler or automator and displays your output in one step, outputting errors in the command window if there are any.

It's not made exclusively for TeX, but if you're on Windows and want to use a single text editor for many purposes, one of which is TeX, Notepad++ is a very good option.

This question has answers with two methods of setting up the connection between notepad++ and a TeX distribution, as well as with SumatraPDF.

Atom with latex, latex-plus, or latextools packages

• 
  Platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux


• 
  Licence: Open source (MIT license)


• 
  % !TEX directives: Yes


• 
  Syntax highlighting: Yes (with language-latex package), customizable


• 
  Code completion: Yes, customizable


• 
  Code folding: Yes


• 
  Spell check: Yes


• 
  SyncTeX: Yes


• 
  Built-in output viewer: Yes (with pdf-view package)


• 
  Project management: Yes (with atom-project-manager package)

Atom is a modern, approachable, yet throughly hackable text editor based on web technologies, with a large community providing extensions through its highly customizable package system. Atom has packages providing Git integration, BibTeX autocompletion and many other features. It draws frequent comparisons with Sublime Text, but has the notable advantage of being open source and completely free.

To compile LaTeX from within the editor, one may choose from a number of packages: latex, latex-plus, and latextools. The last one is an ongoing port of Sublime Text's LaTeXTools plugin and seems to be the most feature-rich of the three (as of 2016-03-20), with additional goodies like reference and bibliography completion as well as environment wrapping. Alternatively, the latexer package also provides reference and bibliography completion.

Syntax highlighting is separately provided by the language-latex package. The output can be automatically opened and synced within the editor through the pdf-view package, or in an external viewer.

Texpad — texpad

• 
  Platforms: Mac (and iOS)


• 
  License: Commercial


• 
  Languages: English, German and Japanese


• 
  Unicode: Yes


• 
  % !TeX directives: Yes


• 
  Syntax Highlighting: Yes


• 
  Auto-typeset: OSX only


• 
  Code Completion: Yes, command completion and autofill


• 
  Code Folding: No


• 
  Spell Checking: Yes


• 
  SyncTeX: Yes


• 
  Built-in Output Viewer: Yes, supports PDF


• 
  Project Management: Yes, included files opened automatically

Both

• Document outline (navigatable table of sections, subsection, etc)


• Auto-detection of typesetting chain (bibtex, makeindex, etc.)


• Global search


• Biber support

OSX

• Custom typeset scripts


• Snippets and code macros

iOS

• Onboard typesetter with support for Virtual fonts, e-TeX and PGF (beamer/tikz).


• Built in bundle manager


• 
  Typesetting API to provide typesetting services to other applications

gedit with the gedit-LaTeX-plugin

Available for: Windows, Mac, Linux and others

Open Source
Unicode: yes
RTL/bidi: yes

It has a clean interface and provides: Code Completion, Spell Checking, Syntax Checking and Validation, Outlines, Wizards, BibTeX Integration, Template Editing, User-Defined Snippets and a preconfigured comprehensive build system using rubber (including LaTeX → DVI with source specials for inverse search).

For my gedit LaTeX suite to be complete, I add two other plugins, first the 'Control your tabs' plugin to get Ctrl-(Shift)-Tab behavior, and also the AutoCompletion plugin which provides automatic suggestions for completion of any word, based on the words already present in the document - it can be a real time saver.

Temporary edit:
Currently the plugin is not ready for release with gedit 3. So, if you're running the latest Ubuntu (11.10) or like being cutting edge, you need to manually install the LaTeX-plugin. The easiest way is to download the version you want from here extract and install with the standard ./configure, make, sudo make install sequence. Read the INSTALL file in the archive for more details. You can also get the most recent version of the plugin from their git repository.

Note: If the ./configure script gives the error "No package ‘gtk+-3.0′ found" then, under Ubuntu, run sudo apt-get install libgtk-3-dev and then try the script again.

TextMate

Available for: Mac

Commercial (Not anymore since version 2.0)

With OS X I use TextMate with MacTeX. Now I don't want to change OS X for Linux only because I work with TextMate. It's powerful like vim and emacs. It's not free 45 euros. You can do all what you want and you can use and define snippets, macros, commands with shell programming or python or ruby. You can use it for mails or you can create HTML pages or you can programming with R, or Ruby. Perhaps to like this editor you need to learn a programming language like ruby or python (Perl and bash can be used). You can try it during one month for free.

Some screenshots:

^{Click image to enlarge}

In this screenshot, you can see the bundles and in the LaTeX bundle you can see some commands and macros. You can define your personal bundle like my "latex author", you can work with the terminal from TextMate. You can find some movies on the net, to see how to work with TextMate.

EDIT: Since version 2.0, TextMate has gone open source, here it is the link to Github.