After we finished installing it, now this tutorial will explain the user interface of Gummi LaTeX editor. We will explain the six parts of its window including the purposes of their contents in simple yet easy to understand way. This knowledge will be useful when you start writing LaTeX documents later. Now feel free to start reading!

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Contents

1. Titlebar

2. Menubar

3. Toolbar

4. Statusbar

5. Editing Area

6. Preview Pane

Titlebar

From the top, there is titlebar, showing current document name and program name Gummi. At first run, titlebar will read "Unsaved Document 1". This will change according to current active file in the editing area.

Contents:

Empty part: left part of titlebar is empty.

Document name: middle part of titlebar will show document name, and

Program name: also part of middle part of titlebar. It says "Gummi".

Minimize: right part of titlebar consisted of standard control buttons starting with minimize, to hide the window temporarily and

Maximize: to resize the window up to fill up the screen, and

Close: to close the program.

Menubar

Second from top, there is menubar, showing all commands or functionalities in Gummi spanning from File to Help.

Contents:

File: containing commands like New, Open, Save, Export and Quit.

Edit: containing commands like Undo, Redo, Select and Preferences (aka Settings).

View: containing commands like Hide/Show parts of Gummi, Page Layout and Full Screen.

Search: containing commands like Find and Replace.

Document: containing commands like Compile, Set Compile Commands, Makeindex, and and BibTeX.

Project: containing commands like Create, Open and Close Project.

Help: containing commands like User Guide and About.

Toolbar

Third from top, there is toolbar, a quick access panel containing mostly used menu in icons form.

Contents:

New: to create new document.

Open: to open saved document.

Save: to save current editing and name it at first time saving.

Bold: to make selected text thicker ("bold") that is inserting \textbf{ } code.

Italic: to make selected text leaning ("italic") that is equal to inserting \emph{ } code.

Underline: to make selected text underlined that is equal to inserting \underline{ } code.

Align left: to make selected paragraph aligned to left that is equal to inserting \begin{flushleft} \end{flushleft} code.

Align center: to make selected paragraph aligned to center that is equal to inserting \begin{center} \end{center} code.

Align right: to make selected paragraph aligned to right that is equal to inserting \begin{flushright} \end{flushright} code.

Statusbars

From the bottom, there is a statusbar under left panel and another statusbar below the right panel. It is a little bit different to the ones normally found at word processors (such as LibreOffice Writer), it does not show properties of current document, instead it provides access to more functionality. However, the bottom most part of Gummi window is empty.

Left statusbar contents:

Close button*: to close if either one of Image, Table, Matrix, or Bibliography opened.

Image: to insert images into document.

Table: to insert tables into document.

Matrix: to insert mathemathic matrices with or without brackets into document.

Bibliography: to insert bibliography into document.

*) Note: on some system, for example ours, this button is not visible e.g. does not have any icon.

Right statusbar contents:

Go back: to turn 1 page back in the preview.

Go forward: to turn 1 page forward in the preview.

Page number: to show current page number and quickly go to a certain page number.

Zoom: to enlarge and shrink the preview.

Pause: to disable temporarily the automatic preview ability.

Editing Area

This is the place user will work with the most on Gummi. It is located at the left side of Gummi window beside Preview Area. You edit your document in form of code (that code is called LaTeX) here. 

Contents:

Tab bar: to enable opening more than one document and show which one currently being edited.

Line numbers: to identify lines of code with numbers.

Text editing area: to write LaTeX code.

Preview Area

The last part of Gummi in this article is Preview Area. It is the second place user will work with the most on Gummi. It is where you see the result automatically every time you write a LaTeX code to your document.

Contents:

Tab bar: containing Preview Pane (default), Build Log, Project and Bibliography.

Preview pane: to show instant preview of LaTeX document being edited.

Build log: to show everything "behind the scene" of the compilation process of the LaTeX document being edited. Mostly, this will be opened whenever errors occured.

Project: to show info related to project.

Bibliography: to show info related to bibliography. 

Conclusions

We learned above that Gummi user interface can be divided into 6 areas, with the most used areas would be Edit Area and Preview Pane. The user interface is simple, without too many buttons visible on screen. And the most important thing is that Gummi allows user to see changes written instantly in the preview pane. Next time, we will learn to write simple article in LaTeX with Gummi.

References

LaTex, Gummi and Ubuntu (in Indonesian) by Author

In This Series

<- Go back to "How To Install Gummi LaTeX Editor".

-> Go forward to "How To Write a Simple Article with Gummi/LaTeX"