Decision Guidance ⇒ LaTex-Editor with LaTex on Linux-Server?

[knightnever]

Hello,
I have a question, that various searches on the internet and in various forums cannot answer.
I wonder, if it is possible to run a LaTex installation on a linux server, so that a LaTex editor on windows can access this installation. So that e.g. no MikTex installation on windows is required.
Is that possible? If yes, which LaTex editor has this feature?

Thanks a lot

[frabjous]

I don't think any LaTeX editor is going to come pre-configured for something like this. But that's not to say it's completely impossible.

I think it would really help to know your circumstances: why you want to do this, what kind of access you have to the linux server (are there shared folders with the Window machine? can you install new software on the linux machine?) Why don't you want to install a LaTeX system on the Windows computer? (You don't have to use MikTeX...) I doubt there's a way to do this that doesn't have significant costs over just having a system installed locally.

First, ask yourself whether or not it would suffice just to use a web-based LaTeX system such as ScribTeX or LaTeXLab for Google docs.

If I'm using my wife's computer, which runs Windows and has no LaTeX system installed, and need to do LaTeX-ing, and don't want to use a web-based editor--say if I want to use custom packages etc. I have installed on my Linux box at work--then usually I just open an SSH session to connect to my work computer, edit using a text-only editor such as vim or emacs (with the appropriate LaTeX plugins), and compile from there. If you wanted a graphical editor, I suppose you could connect via VNC rather than SSH, and then you could use any editor installed on the linux machine (e.g., Kile).

But if you want to use an editor installed on the client machine instead, I suppose it could be done. This would be easiest if there were shared folders between the machines. (If there aren't shared folders, I guess there would be work-arounds. E.g., you could create a batch file that transferred the file, then ran the appropriate command on it, and then transferred the result back.)

With a shared folder, for example, you could log in to the linux machine via SSH or whatever, and run latexmk with the -pvc option, so that the .tex file is automatically re-compiled whenever it changes. Then all you'd have to do is save the file in whatever editor you were using on Windows and the linux machine would process it automatically.

Or someone else might have some even better ideas.

[localghost]

It would require that the editor on the Windows machine knows how to access the remote LaTeX system. As far as I know none of the existing editors masters that. Perhaps you can setup the network paths in the settings of the Windows editor to start the LaTeX compiler. But I would not put my money on that working.


Best regards and welcome to the board
Thorsten