Configuring TeXstudio#

TeXstudio can be adapted in a wide range. Some options are directly available in the GUI via context menus, see here , others are available with the “Configure TeXstudio” command in the “Options” menu (“Preferences” under Mac OS X). Note that there are two levels of detail. More advanced or less often used options are only visible if you toggle “Show advanced options” in the lower left corner.

Adapting the main GUI#

Side-panel (Docks)#

The side-panel and the log panel may be hidden with a control on the lower-left edge of the main window.

The sidepanel itself consists of different docks which can be reordered, split and even moved to the right hand side of the window.

The side-panel set-up can be reset to default by using View/Show/”Reset Sidepanel/Docks”.

The menu “View/Show” also offers to show/hide docks.

Toolbars#

The toolbars can be hidden by a right click anywhere on the toolbar area.

They can be moved by dragging the handler on the left-hand side.

Configuring some general aspects#

This panel allows the setting of some general aspects.

• The “style” and “color scheme” of TeXstudio can be selected. The modern variant is closer to texmaker, “Orion Dark” and “Adwaita Dark” provide a dark mode.
• The language of the menus can be changed directly to ignore system settings.

The advanced options allow:

• Limit the number of recent files
• The use of system dialog instead of the qt dialog
• show always the structure of the “master” document if one is set
• automatically restore the previous session
• and to store session paths relatively which allows easier moving of files/projects

Configuring the editor#

You may change the default encoding for new files (“Configure TeXstudio” -> “Editor” -> “Editor Font Encoding”) if you don’t want utf8 as encoding. Don’t forget to set the same encoding in the preamble of your documents. (e.g. \usepackage[utf8] , if you use utf-8).

TeXstudio can auto detect utf-8 and latin1 encoded files, but if you use a different encoding in your existing documents you have to specify it in the configuration dialog before opening them. (and then you also have to disable the auto detection)

• “Folding” toggles the editors code-folding capability (hide sections of the text).
• The selection box “Indentation mode” lets you select, whether indented lines are followed by lines of the same indentation after pressing Enter or letting TeXstudio do automatic indentation.
• Double quotes can be automatically replaced by language specific ones when typing "
• The editor can show line numbers left of the text if desired.
• The shown inline checking results can be selected with some granularity.

The advanced options allow among others:

Automatically load all included files of a LaTeX document

This load all child document and scans them. This is necessary to provide a complete set of available references, bibID and possibly used packages if they are defined in a child document

Scan LaTeX distribution for installed packages

This scan allows txs to determine if the given packages are valid and also to provide proposal for package name completion

Configuring the advanced editor settings (Advanced option)#

The advanced editor option allow fine control over many different aspects. The overview here is incomplete and concentrates on commonly used changes.

Show image tooltip on images in files

when hovering over an image filename (e.g. in a \includegraphics command), a tooltip with the graphics content is shown

Show help as tooltip on text in editor

when hovering over a LaTeX command in the editor, txs can show a tooltip on that command if it is described in some latex command reference.

This allows to change the line wrapping mechanism. By default all lines are wrapped at the window edge. They can also be wrapped after a defined number of characters which is not always the same horizontal width if the characters are not monospaced. Or hard line wrapping after a number of characters can be selected. This inserts a new line when the number of characters exceeds a defined values. This insertion is done when saving a document and only for changed lines.

Auto save all files

txs allows to automatically save all files every few minutes

The section for the structure panel offers:

Reference command in context menu

use this command when inserting a reference with command from a context menu

Regular expression for TODO comment

define what comment is considered as TODO comment (which are highlighted and collected specifically )

Use color in global TOC

The global TOC can use colored background to distinguish between different included files. Different color schemes and no color are possible.

The table autoformatting affects the manipulate table tools .

Are special commands which do not add cell content and need to handled specially, e.g. \hline at the end of a row.

Special commands position

where to place them when reformatting a table.

One line per cell

when reformatting a table, just put each cell in an individual line

Configuring the latex related commands#

LaTeX comes with a number of command line tools to compile and manipulate LaTeX documents. The commands section defines there location and arguments.

The default settings should work with the recent and standard LaTeX distributions, but you could have to modify them (“Configure TeXstudio” -> “Commands”). To change a command, just click on the button at the end of the corresponding line and select the command in the file browser : TeXstudio will automatically adapt the syntax of the command.

You can use a number of special characters / character sequences to address the context of the current document. They are expanded at runtime:

filename of the root document for of current document without extension

current line number

? followed by further characters

See the instruction at the bottom of the configuration dialog.

Location of the TeXstudio executable (useful for portable settings)

Location of the settings file (texstudio.ini)

You can always restore the original settings using the revert button to the right.

Command syntax in detail#

Before an external command is executed the command line undergoes expansion where the following tokens are recognized and replaced by TeXstudio:

• % is replaced by the absolute pathname of the root (master) document up to but excluding the file extension.
• %% is replaced by the % symbol.
• @ is replaced by the current line number at the moment when the corresponding external command was run.
• @@ is replaced by the @ symbol.
• ?[selector][pathname parts][terminating char] is replaced by a formatted filename where:
  • [selector] selects the pathname that is used by [pathname parts]. It can be one of the following:
    • No selector used at all. In this case the root (master) document is selected.
    • c: selects the current document which can be different from the root document. Note that the trailing colon is a part of the selector.
    • p: searches for a file with same basename as the root document and extension ext. The search is done in the directory containing the root (master) document and in the additional PDF search paths. If a matching file is found then it selected for further processing by [pathname parts]. If no matching file is found then TeXstudio selects a default pathname which is the master file with its extension replaced by ext. Note that the trailing colon is a part of the selector.
    • a expands to the absolute path of the selected pathname. This absolute path is up to but excluding the filename of the selected pathname.
    • r expands to the relative path of the selected pathname. This relative path is up to but excluding the filename of the selected pathname.
    • m expands to the complete basename of the selected pathname. The complete basename is the filename part up to but excluding the last dot in the filename.
    • e expands to the extension of the selected pathname.
    • ) Do not add characters before or after the expanded [pathname parts]. Used to mark the end of the expansion token.
    • “ to enclose the expanded [pathname parts] in double quotes.
    • . to add a dot after the expanded [pathname parts].
    • (space) to add a space after the expanded [pathname parts].
    • ?ame” expands to the absolute pathname of the root document enclosed in double-quotes (e.g. /some/directory/mydocument.tex).
    • ?e) expands to the extension of the root document without leading dot (e.g. tex).
    • ?m expands to the double-quoted complete basename of the root document (identical to %).
    • ?me expands to the filename of the root document (e.g. example.tex).
    • ?p:ame expands to the absolute pathname of the output PDF file (e.g. /some/directory/mydocument.pdf).
    • ?*.aux expands once for each .aux file in the current directory.

    Set-up for external viewers#

    Some viewers can jump to (and visually highlight) a position in the DVI/PDF file that corresponds to a certain line number in the (La)TeX source file. To enable this forward search, you can enter the command line of the corresponding viewer either as command line for an user tool in the User menu (User/User Commands/Edit…) or in the viewer command line in the config dialog (“Options/Configure TeXstudio” -> “Commands”). When the viewer is launched, the @-placeholder will be replaced by the current line number and ?c:ame by the complete absolute filename of the current file. If your PDF file is not in the same directory as your .tex file you can use the ?p:ame placeholder. For details see External Commands .

    On Windows, you can execute DDE commands by inserting a command of the form: dde:///service/control/[commands. ] or dde:///programpath:service/control/[commands. ] to start the program if necessary.

    Below you can find a list of commands for some common viewers. Of course, you have to replace (your program path) with the path of the program on your computer, if you want to use a command.

    Sumatra#

    Launch Sumatra from TeXstudio and configure Sumatra for inverse search

    "(your sumatra path)" -reuse-instance -inverse-search "\"*(your TeXstudio path)*\" \"%%f\" -line %%l" "?am.pdf"

    Jump to a line in a running Sumatra (Windows only):

    Launch Sumatra if it is not running and jump to a line in it (Windows only)

    dde:///(your sumatra path):SUMATRA/control/[ForwardSearch("?am.pdf","?c:am.tex",@,0,0,1)]

    Launch TeXstudio from Sumatra

    "(your TeXstudio path)" "%f" -line %l

    A possible value for (your Sumatra path) is C:\Program Files\SumatraPDF\SumatraPDF.exe

    Foxit Reader#

    Launch Foxit Reader from TeXstudio

    "(your Reader path)" "?am.pdf"

    Acrobat Reader#

    Launch Acrobat Reader from TeXstudio

    "*(your Reader path)*" "?am.pdf"

    Navigation and closing are achieved via DDE commands. Since version 10 of the adobe products the DDE service name contains a letter for the Product and the version number.