i-LaTeX : Manipulating Transitional Representations between LaTeX Code and Generated Documents

ABSTRACT Document description languages such as LaTeX are used extensively to author scientific and technical documents, but editing them is cumbersome: code-based editors only provide generic features, while WYSIWYG interfaces only support a subset of the language. Our interviews with 11 LaTeX users highlighted their difficulties dealing with textually-encoded abstractions and with the mappings between source code and document output. To address some of these issues, we introduce Transitional Representations for document description languages, which enable the visualisation and manipulation of fragments of code in relation to their generated output. We present i-LaTeX, a LaTeX editor equipped with Transitional Representations of formulae, tables, images, and grid layouts. A 16-participant experiment shows that Transitional Representations let them complete common editing tasks significantly faster, with fewer compilations, and with a lower workload. We discuss how Transitional Representations affect editing strategies and conclude with directions for future work.