KIle -an integrated Latex environment

Kile is an integrated Latex environment software with the following features(from
its Kile homepage

• Compile, convert and view your document with one click.
  
• Auto-completion of (La)TeX commands
  
• Templates and wizards make starting a new document very little work.
  
• Easy insertion of many standard tags and symbols and the option to define (an arbitrary number of) user defined tags.
  
• Inverse and forward search: click in the DVI viewer and jump to the corresponding LaTeX line in the editor, or jump from the editor to the corresponding page in the viewer.
  
• Finding chapter or sections is very easy, Kile constructs a list of all the chapter etc. in your document. You can use the list to jump to the corresponding section.
  
• Collect documents that belong together into a project.
  
• Easy insertion of citations and references when using projects.
  
• Flexible and smart build system to compile your LaTeX documents.
  
• QuickPreview, preview a selected part of your document.
  
• Easy access to various help sources.
  
• Advanced editing commands.
  

Although Kile is a KDE application, you can still install it in Ubuntu Koala using the standard

sudo apt-get install kile

command in the command line. The aptitude system will pull in a lot of KDE support softwares even if you are more comfortable with the GNOME Desktop. At this writing, the version I have is 2.0.83 in KDE 4.3.2, while the latest unstable version is already at 2.1 Beta 3. Kile is easy to use but you need to know some rudiments of Knuth's Latex typesetting setting system of denoting mathematical equations. As a simple example, let us write the following in kile: The kinetic energy of a body with mass m and speed v is given by (1/2) mv^2. Now run Kile and start with a new article. Automatically, Kile will give you a blank built in article template like this:

\documentclass[a4paper,10pt]{article}
\usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}

%opening
\title{}
\author{}

\begin{document}

\maketitle

\begin{abstract}

\end{abstract}

\section{}

\end{document}

Now edit the above so it will be shown as

\documentclass[a4paper,10pt]{article}
\usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}

%opening
\title{Kinetic Energy of a moving body}
\author{Ali Baba}

\begin{document}

\maketitle

\begin{abstract}
Example Latex article example
\end{abstract}

\section{Definition}
The kinetic energy of a body with mass $m$ and speed $v$ is given by $\frac{1}{2}m\cdot v^2$.

\end{document}

Save the file to myfirst.tex and then click on Quickbuild icon. If everything is allright, Kile will call support programs to generate a pdf file myfirst.pdf. Here is an image of the output.

If you get this far, congratulations!  There is still so much to discuss but we stop here at this moment. We only illustrate that KIle is an easy to use free-software to generate professional looking typeset documents.


To be continued... Chip in your comments so the post will be more useful to you.