Katvan is a bare-bones editor for the Typst typesetting system, designed for working with documents whose primary language is written from right to left. Features include live previews, syntax highlighting, spell checking, auto-completion, forward/inverse search and more.
This is free and open source software.
Features include:
- Reasonably good RTL editing:
- Mostly thanks to Qt’s excellent Rich Text Framework/
- But also specific additional functionality, for example:
- Syntax-aware line directionality heuristic.
- Automatic directionality isolation of inline math and code.
- Displaying BiDi control characters with a special custom font.
- Toggling between logical and visual cursor movement.
- Manually flipping paragraph direction (using both Windows style Ctrl+RShift/LShift, or Firefox style Ctrl+Shift+X).
- Handy commands to manually insert BiDi control marks and isolates for when the algorithm doesn’t quite lead to the right result (e.g. for some instances of inline raw text).
- Live previews.
- Syntax highlighting.
- Syntax-aware spell checking.
- Autocomplete.
- Typical code editor niceties – auto indentation, bracket insertion, etc.
- Forward and inverse search.
- Modelines.
- Supported on Linux and Windows 10/11.
- Experimental support for macOS 12 (“Monterey”) and above.
Website: github.com/IgKh/katvan
Support:
Developer:
License: GNU General Public License v3.0

Katvan is written in C++. Learn C++ with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Document Processors | |
|---|---|
| LyX | Power and flexibility of TeX/LaTeX with an intuitive interface |
| TeXstudio | Fully featured open source LaTeX editor |
| TeXmacs | WYSIWYG mathematical text editor using TeX fonts |
| TeXmaker | Integrates many different tools |
| typst | Fast markup-based system for high-quality typesetting |
| TeXworks | Simple front-end modeled on TeXShop |
| Kile | KDE Integrated LaTeX Environment |
| SILE | Simon’s Improved Layout Engine |
| Enter TeX | Integrated LaTeX Environment for the GNOME desktop |
| AUCTeX | Edit LaTeX, ConTeXt, docTeX, Texinfo, and TeX files |
| Gummi | Simple LaTeX editor |
| Typewriter | Create documents with typst |
| Typesetter | Focused GTK writing environment with automatic previews |
| Katvan | Strong RTL support with live preview and editing tools |
| Open LaTeX Studio | LaTeX editor supporting remote collaboration between users |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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