Magic Comments

Note

These should work for most LaTeX editors, but some may have specific requirements or additional options.

Magic comments are placed at the beginning of a document and affect how the editor handles the document.

This list is not exhaustive, but covers the most common magic comments.

Compiler Selection

The compiler can be selected using:

% !TeX program = lualatex

This will compile the document using LuaLaTeX. Other options include:

• pdflatex
• xelatex

Encoding

Note

This is not required for most documents. And LaTeX3 by default uses UTF-8 encoding.

The encoding can be selected using:

% !TeX encoding = UTF-8

This will set the encoding to UTF-8. Other options include:

• latin1
• latin9
• ascii

Spell Check

The spell check language can be selected using:

% !TeX spellcheck = en_GB

This will set the spell check language to British English. Other options include:

• en_US
• de_DE

TeX Root

The root document can be specified using:

% !TeX root = main.tex

This will set the root document to main.tex. This is useful for multi-file documents.