Word as native LaTeX editor

• Tries to make LaTeX documents more beautiful for revision by co-authors and supervisors who use MS Word (i.e., add pictures of LaTeX-environments, hide LaTeX clutter). The revised .doc (which is in fact a LaTeX file) can be edited further in Word, or copied back to your favourite LaTeX editor (just Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C).
• Use MS Word as basic LaTeX editor (i.e., no file format conversion)

Files/Installation

• Word template with macros: LatexEditor.dotm. Put this Word template into the start-up folder of MS Word: C:\Users\<your username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Word\STARTUP
• LaTeX-ribbon-tab: Word Customizations.exportedUI. In Word, import the customization file in to the ribbon: Right-Click on ribbon -> Customize the Ribbon.... This is the most straighforward way to install. However, this simple import overwrites other custom ribbons. However, most users have no custom ribbons (ACROBAT and other add-in ribbon-tabs seems to get preserved;-))

Features

The macros in the template let you (all functionality through buttons on a new LaTeX tab in the Word ribbon):

• Preview LaTeX-environments (in current version, all together): equation, align, table, figure, etc.
• Format some common Latex-markup to gray or white, and text inside label, (eq)ref, cite(tp) to blue
• Format LaTeX-section markups into Word headings. With this, navigation and folding of parts is possible
• Hide LaTeX-markup (using the hidden-text feature of Word)
• Run pdfLaTeX for the whole Word document and display the resulting .pdf
• Delete LaTeX-markup
• A simple unicode <-> tex conversion of very few characters:
  • \item<space> <-> UTF bullet
  • \textellipsis <-> ...
  • ~ <-> non-breaking white-space
  • -- <-> en-dash
  • --- <-> em-dash
  • apostroph conversions (may still have bugs)

Prerequisites

• LaTeX installation (with the usual latemk command)

• Installed LaTeX packages: standalone, preview, amsmath, amssymb

• ghostscript installation (e.g. from https://www.ghostscript.com/). For previewing, the macro-code first ask you to browse manually for the .exe, or else it searches the usual 32-bit or 64-bit progam folders on the c-drive (i.e. gswin32c.exe or gswin64c.exe). Info: Ghostcript is used as the .pdf -> .png converter.

• Tick the required References in the VBA-editor of Word (ALT-F11 -> References):

  • VBA Scripting Runtime (or similar named)
  • VBA Regex (or similar named)

  Else the code gives errors: Object not found, etc.

• Trust Center of Word: Add location of macro-file to Trusted Location etc.

Example workflow

• After you drafted your .tex in your preferred LaTeX-editor, open the .tex in Word (MS-DOS import setting e.g. works, or you draft your LaTeX directly in Word
• For a nice viewing:
  • Set paragraph spacing to zero
  • Align pargraphs to block
  • LateX-comments must be written with two %% to be seen for formatting (hiding). Hence, comments with single % are comments in Word visible for co-authors
• Run the VBA-macro (accessible through the new LaTeX-Ribbon) to preview: table, equation, figure, align etc. as images
• Prepare the file for revision in MS Word: Convert the preview-images into inline pictures, then hide the markup completely. If some LateX clutter is not recognized by hiding, marke this text and set hidden yourself in Word
• Note: If the pictures (shapes) are converted to inline shapes (shapes is Word jargon) than a control character is added by Word to the text. Hence, delete the shapes first with the Ribbon-command if you want to copy the LaTeX-code (e.g. the RunLaTeX does this also to run pdftex on the document).

Bibliography

There is no preview of bibliography. This can be done in a minute manually. Run the runLaTeX-macro, or use your preferred Latex-editor to produce a .pdf of your work (which has the reference section), then view the .pdf with word, and paste the reference section at the end.

Example: test.docx

Original .tex inside Word

Prettified .tex inside Word

This is the same, valid .tex as before, but just with some text formatted as hidden in MS Word, and title, section etc. formatted by Word's Title, Heading 1, ec., and the environments previewed as pictures (either in the canvas layer (as so-called shapes in MS Word), or in the document layer (as inline shapes).

Limitations/Bugs

• Tested on MS Windows 10 and Word 2016.
• Currently, you can preview and delete all generated pictures at once only
• Not all markup gets recognized, and labels, refs, and cites get not deleted
• Equation numbering is basic (align is not yet recognized with multiple numbers)
• The snippets when converted to inline-shapes do not wrap properly on a line on their own
• Only ASCII character files work surely. The conversion is not fully UTF compatible.
• Make sure to isuse convert to gray before prevewing (that this, do not hide LaTeX markup), such that the blue highlighting is not shifted
• A MsbBox may still say that you can browse to ghostscript already installed by the common LaTeX distributions TeXLive or MikTeX, but this (truncated) versions seem not to work

Good to know

• To edit a Word-template .dotm, do not double-click in Windows Explorer (this opens a derived new document), but use the Open-dialog from Word