Introduction

Basic facts

About Kile
Kile is an integrated LATEX environment for the desktop. Kile gives you the ability to use all the functionality of LATEX in a graphical interface, giving you easy, immediate, and customized access to all programs for LATEX code-completion, compiling, postprocessing, debugging, conversion and viewing tools; you also get very handy wizards, a LATEX reference and a powerful project manager.

Kile and the Editor Component
Kile is based on the editor component, a lot of its editing capabilities stem from the editor component itself. Kile extends these capabilities with features to edit LATEX documents. To learn more about the editor component and its capabilities, see the webpage.

What is LATEX?
LATEX is a text-processing system derived from TEX, a program developed originally in 1977 by Donald Knuth to help layout text in a professional way and obtain a layout quality that is on a par with the work of a professional typesetter. LATEX was created by Leslie Lamport to give authors an automatic typesetter, especially to ease the expensive and painstaking process of typesetting of mathematical formulas and expressions, which are enclosed within dollar signs in LATEX for a reason. Today, word-processing programs let any user act as typesetter, but what is often needed is a document that simply looks good without having to spend hours to bring it into shape. LATEX takes that burden on its shoulders, and lets you concentrate on the document instead of on the layout. And yes, it will look good!

How do you pronounce it? Why that strange typesetting?
There is a funny tradition of TEX-related packages to have the strangest pronunciation and typesetting possible. TEX was supposed to be brought in from the Greek τεχ, in Latin letters tech. There are a lot of explanations why, but most likely it is because TEX was originally conceived for technical reports, and indeed its foremost ability was the correct and easy typesetting of mathematical formulae, then an extremely expensive, time-consuming and frustrating business.
The pronunciation is supposed to be as follows: T as you would expect, E as in get, and X as in the German ich. If you do not know what ch sounds like, it is more or less like the sound a hissing cat produces; the IPA symbol is /ç/. Many people report a different pronunciation of ach (IPA symbol /x/), but according to some Greeks, the first version is indeed correct. You should be aware that a lot of people mispronounce TEX as /teks/ or /tek/.
Last, in LATEX the first LA is pronounced as lay: the idea being, while raw TEX is difficult, even a layman can use LATEX macros. A less inspiring, but more realistic explanation is that it stems from the surname of Leslie Lamport, the creator of LATEX. Now you know!

LATEX 101
The LATEX typesetting system is similar to other markup languages such as , which is used in many types of documents (including the one you are reading), or , which is used for web pages. The general idea behind markup languages is to have special keywords, called tags, that tell a program (a word processor, a web browser, or the LATEX compiler) how the text enclosed within the tags is to be interpreted. Kile offers a number of such tags in the LaTeX menu in the menu bar.
While we will try to give you a good idea of what LATEX is, this document is, of course, not The Definitive Book on LATEX. If you want to learn LATEX in depth, you may want to borrow a specialized book from your local library.
As with any other markup language, LATEX documents contain a preamble, which defines global properties, such as paper size, page numbering, dimensions of the text on the page, and a document body, which contains the text of the document. The preamble is composed at least of the \documentclass command. It precedes the document body, which starts with the command \begin{document} and is concluded with the command \end{document}.

Kile's Main Features

QuickStart Wizard
The QuickStart wizard built into Kile is a useful feature to quickly start creating documents in Kile. Choosing the wizard from the menubar gives you several choices for the creation of your document. You can also specify some options related to the document right away.
Class options:
Document Class: choose the type of document you want to create: article, book, letter, report, scrartcl, scrreprt, scrbook, prosper, beamer or other custom-defined.
Typeface Size: tell Kile what point size (pt) you want to use.
Paper Size: choose the size or style of sheets.
Encoding: In general it is a good idea to use your system's standard encoding. Modern systems now move more and more to UTF-8 as the standard encoding. If you can, use utf8 or utf8x (which is indeed the correct spelling for LATEX documents).
Other options: this allows you to set further options such as printing, draft, and others.
Packages
This lists some of the most common additional packages used in LATEX. Select the check box to include it.
Document Properties:
Author: put your name here.
Title: add the document title here.
Date: specify the date.

Predefined Templates
The predefined templates in Kile are:
Empty document: real freaks start from scratch!
Article: sets the article format, for a document short enough not to be broken down to chapters.
Report: sets the report format, for a middle-sized document, with, for example, page numbering on the page's outer edge.
Book: sets the book format, a full-fledged flavor, so powerful that it is used to write many university textbooks.
Letter: sets the letter format.
Beamer, HA-Prosper: create nice presentations in PDF with a superior look and all LATEX power.
Powerdot: Powerdot is the follower of the packages seminar and HA-Prosper. It does not have as many options as Beamer, but it is easy to use and it can create really nice presentations in PDF.
Scrartcl, Scrbook, Scrreprt, Scrlttr2: the KOMA-Script document classes, especially adapted to German typography. Use them whenever you write German texts.
Xelatex: a modified Article template to use with XeLaTeX.
Note that all of these templates can be adjusted to the user's requirements.
New users need not worry: this list is just a brief description of the available features, and a more detailed description can be found in Quickstart.

Syntax Highlighting
Kile is similar to other programs that deal with source code and editing, and will automatically highlight commands, options and items that are used (and abused). Kile makes it possible to easily spot problematic areas: for example, if you see major areas of text turn green, it is likely that you forgot to close a math environment somewhere.

Auto-Completion of Environments
The auto-completion of environments means that, when you begin a new environment by typing \begin{environment}, Kile will automatically insert a matching \end{environment} command, with a line in between them for your text. You can of course deactivate it if you want in Settings Configure Kile... LaTeX Environments.

Jump to Structure Element
All documents are normally structured in a hierarchy of some type. LATEX allows you to break up documents into the following hierarchy (part being highest in the hierarchy, and subparagraph being lowest):
\part
\chapter
\section
\subsection
\subsubsection
\paragraph
\subparagraph
When viewing a document in the Structure view, you can jump between elements by clicking on the element you would like to view.

Inverse Search
When creating your own LATEX files, inverse search can be very helpful. Once you have created a file (DeVice Independent File) or PDF file, you can click the left mouse button while pressing in the viewer and Kile will jump to the corresponding line in the LATEX source code.
A is a type of file containing a description of a formatted document, along with other information including character font, and is besides PDF the usual output of TEX or LATEX. A number of utilities exist to view, convert and print files on various systems and devices.

Forward Search
When using inverse search, the selection of items in the or PDF file is associated with the editor, so when you click on the or PDF file, the main window jumps to the corresponding section of LATEX code in the editor. Forward search is the exact opposite of this. Forward search will allow you to click on a specific section of text in the LATEX code, and jump to the associated position in the viewer window.

The Toolbar
New: begin a new document.
Open: open a new document.
Close: close your document.
Define document as master: this is used when working with multiple files. Having a master document will let you work more easily with other .tex files included in your document. If you are using projects, you can also set in Project Project Options a project-wide master document.
Quickbuild: compiles your LATEX source code and displays the results automatically unless there are errors contained in the document.
Watch file mode: this mode will "watch" the file for changes, and will not launch a new session of after Quickbuild.
View logfile: views the .log file, so you can spot errors.
Previous error: jumps backward through the .log file and highlights errors in the source.
Next error: jumps forward through the .log file and highlights errors in the source.
Stop: halts current tool.
LaTeX: runs LATEX on the active document.
ViewDVI: launches viewer.
DVItoPS: converts a to a (PS).
ViewPS: launches (PS) viewer.
PDFLaTeX: runs PDFLATEX on the active document.
ViewPDF: launches the PDF viewer.
DVItoPDF: converts a to a PDF.
PStoPDF: converts a PS to a PDF.
ViewHTML: views created.
ForwardDVI: jump to the page of the file that corresponds to the current line in the editor.
ForwardPDF: jump to the page of the PDF file that corresponds to the current line in the editor.
If you look at the Edit toolbar, you will notice three large drop-down menus. The drop-down menus were designed for you to be able to quickly add certain common features into your document. The first drop down box is used for quickly dividing your document by parts, chapter, sections and so on; the available commands to add segments to your LATEX source code are:
part: highest level of sectioning for a document.
chapter: starts a new chapter.
section: create a new section.
subsection: create a new subsection.
subsubsection: a secondary section between subsection and paragraph.
paragraph: create a new paragraph.
subparagraph: create a new subparagraph.
The drop down box named Other is used to insert items into your document such as indexes, footnotes, and references; the available commands are:
label: a command that produces a label for a chapter, a figure or another element.
index: creates an entry for the index.
footnote: creates a footnote in your document.
ref: used to refer to a predefined label, which you can choose from a drop-down list.
pageref: just like ref, but refers to a page instead of a structure element.
cite: create a reference with data from a bibliography.
The Other drop-down menu
The Other drop-down menu
The Other drop-down menu
Selecting the label for a reference
Selecting the label for a reference
Selecting the label for a reference
When using cite, you are presented with a drop-down list of bibitems, but if you are using BibTEX this will only work if the file belongs to a Project. For editing BibTEX files the usage of specialized editors is recommended. The author has had good results with KBibTEX. Of course you can also write the BibTEX files by hand inside Kile.
The last drop down box labeled tiny is used to set the size of the text. You can set the size of the main text, of footnotes, and so on. The available commands are:
tiny: smallest.
scriptsize: very small.
footnotesize: smaller.
small: small.
normalsize: normal.
large: large.
Large: larger.
LARGE: even larger.
huge: still larger.
Huge: largest.