Représentations intermédiaires interactives pour la manipulation de code LaTeX: Interactive Intermediate Representations for LaTeX Code Manipulation

Abstract

Editing documents written in a description language such as LaTeX is difficult. Few editors improve the experience, and WYSIWYG interfaces for LaTeX are often limited. Yet, LaTeX is still used extensively, especially in the scientific community. We interviewed 11 LaTeX users and performed a thematic analysis of the issues they face. We define the concept of interactive intermediate representations (IIR) and propose to use it to answer some of these problems. IIR constitute a new kind of user interface for document description languages that enable to visualise and manipulate certain pieces of code through suitable representations. We present i- LaTeX , a prototype of a LaTeX editor equipped with IIR, and discuss its design, its implementation, its preliminary evaluation and its limits. We conclude on the benefits of IIR for document description language editing.