Software Tools for Geeks
These are the open source tools that I use on a daily basis. Some of them are very nice, some of them are a little buggy, all of them are wonderful.
Text Editors
Emacs
My text editor of choice. I write most of my papers, projects, this web site, C code, and Lisp programs in Emacs. I'm not very good at it, but it is very powerful.
- Aquamacs: Emacs for Mac OSX. Aquamacs has very good LaTeX integration, and is my preferred editor.
- Carbon Emacs: Native Carbon build, but not as well integrated as Aquamacs. But some Emacs people prefer it.
- Cocoa Emacs: Build for OS X or GnuStep.
- gnu emacs: The original, for Linux
- xemacs: I'm told there is a difference.
- Emacs on Windows: Complete download and install instructions.
Others
Emacs is not the only text editor in the world. You may hate it, and if you do, you may prefer one of these.
- VIM: Vim stands for Vi iMproved. Vi is a very lightweight text editor, available for *nix, OS X, and Windows.
- Smultron: An open source text editor for OS X. Smultron has memory leaks like you would not believe and slows down a lot when its been open for any length of time.
- TeXmacs: WYSIWYG editor that produces LaTeX like output, doubles as a programming environment, triples as a graphics editor. X-Windows releases dominate.
- Aptana: Aptana is an eclipse based web IDE. It features codes assist for JavaScript, HTML, and CSS.
Graphics
- Inkscape: A very acceptable vector graphics editor that saves to SVG format, and many others. All of the iconic graphics on these pages were created with Inkscape or...
- The Gimp. The Gnu Image Manipulation Program. Does not handle CMYK well, but suffiecient for web graphics, and then some. The montage on my front page was created with The Gimp.
- Pixen: Pixel editor of OSX. Some of the ALES graphics were created in Pixen
- Blender: Open source, cross platform, 3D graphics program. Very powerful, and another tool I use.
LaTeX
TeX is a typesetting system designed by Donald Knuth. LaTeX is a popular set of macros that make TeX easier to use. The PDFs on these pages were probably created using LaTeX, or TeXmacs, which uses its own macros.
LaTeX separates form from content, and makes it easy to reformat huge amounts of text very easily. Also, for student work, it looks more professional than a word file.
Mac Users
- TeX on OS X: Mac LaTeX set up page. Instructions, documentation, and more.
- BibDesk: BibDesk is a very well designed front end for BibTeX. I love this program.
Linux or Windows
- TeX on Linux: Some links and instructions. Not for Linux newbies.
- MiKTeX All the tools you need will be here.
General Tools
- CTAN: The comprehensive TeX archive network.
- Beamer: A very nice presentation class for LaTeX. Several presentations on this site were built with Beamer.
- Bard HW Style: A nice homework style for LaTeX, very easy to use.
- CS: Styles and classes useful for computer science professionals.
- HeVeA: LaTeX to HTMl converter. Several papers on this site were generated with HeVeA.
- bibunits, bibtopic: I've used bibunits to produce an annotated bibliography in TeX. I have not yet tried bibtopic.
Other Tools
Web Browsers
These pages work best with web browsers that aren't Internet Explorer. Here is where you can get one.
Assorted Software
- Cyberduck: Very good FTP client for OS X.
- Fink: Unix tools for OS X.
- Cygwin: Linux like environment for Windows
- Kubuntu: User friendly Linux installer
Created 14 January 2006
by John P. Daigle
