FW Editor: How and when did you start writing the code for KLatexFormula?
Philippe Faist: The project was started in 2005, as a very minimalistic front-end to create PNG images from LaTeX equations to be pasted in external documents, written in the C++/KDE3 environment. This program was not meant to be made public at the time, and was first published on kde-apps.org in 2006, before being moved to sourcforge.net.

FW Editor: How do you plan to improve KLatexFormula? What shall we expect from the next KLatexFormula version?
Philippe Faist: Many new features and partial code rewrites have already been introduced in version 3.2. In the near future we could expect new plugins and new back-ends for the library browser to be written. Integration into other applications has been considered seriously and 3.2 features a kate plugin, as well as some simple OpenOffice.org and very basic (X)Emacs macros. Future versions will improve the KDE plugin, and could integrate into more applications. New ideas for features and general feedback is also always welcome.

FW Editor: What are the advantages of using KLatexFormula?
Philippe Faist: * Straightforward and easy to use, while still being able to tune many options * Advanced control over exported types (both bitmap and vector graphics) * Paste or drop equations into OpenOffice.org, Inkscape, Gimp, Thunderbird, Adobe Illustrator, MS Office, etc. * Advanced Library with a "History" tab as well as "Archive" tab allowing to categorize and tag evaluated equations * Many other features, which you can learn about on http://klatexformula.sourceforge.net/

FW Editor: KLatexFormula received numerous rewards making it one of the best applications of its type. Why is KLatexFormula so appreciated?
Philippe Faist: Probably it is more up to KLatexFormula users to answer this question... I can only guess that my effort spent into thinking how I could make KLatexFormula most useful--instead of most pretty or most complex--has received a globally positive response.

FW Editor: How can you describe KLatexFormula in just a few words? Why?
Philippe Faist: Simple and built on existing robust technology, but still very flexible and tunable, and oriented towards usability. LaTeX is regarded as the best publishing systems for scientific documents, while the Qt library is highly appreciated among developers for its simplicity of use, portability and robustness. KLatexFormula uses both tools in providing a simple interface, however switching to expanded mode provides more options, and opening the settings dialogs even more. KLatexFormula can be extended by plug-ins. It can take various appearances, dock into the system tray, and export custom formats. This makes klatexformula an ideal tool for many different applications, ranging from typing nice equations into an Inkscape drawing to producing a JPEG image displaying an e-mail on web pages.

FW Editor: Which is your favorite KLatexFormula feature and why?
Philippe Faist: The feature I am probably most proud of is the new flexible library API. This feature is not too visible to the normal user, and took a lot of lines of code to develop, however it would allow to very easily develop in the future other resource types to search for store or formulas--like exploring equations on a Wikipedia page, or storing formulas in a remote database, etc.

FW Editor: Is there anything you would like to add about KLatexFormula?
Philippe Faist: KLatexFormula is not only a full-featured graphical interface, it is also a command-line tool as well as a set of C++ tools grouped into two libaries, klfbackend and klftools, providing respectively the necessary functionality to get images from an equation and a collection of C++/Qt4 utilities that are not specific to klatexformula, and that can be used in other Qt4 applications. The klatexformula wiki contains articles on this subject, on http://klatexformula.sourceforge.net/klfwiki/ .

FW Editor: Do you have any message or anything to share with KLatexFormula users?
Philippe Faist: I hope this can be useful for someone. I'm not sure of having much time to spend for keeping this application up to date, but I was encouraged to publish it so here it is... :-)