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This website itself is made with ATHENA.
ATHENA, i.e. the Advanced Typesetting and Hypertext Environment for Notes and Archives, is a math-centered knowledge workstation derived from GNU TEXmacs, combining structured WYSIWYG typesetting with vault-based knowledge organization and inter-connectivity needed by large mathematical note collections.
ATHENA is not for everyone. Use it only if you are disappointed with both LATEX and Obsidian. ATHENA is not a LATEX editor, not yet another Obsidian clone, and not a conservative TEXmacs distribution. It is an experimental research workstation and mathematical knowledge infrastructure. It assumes that you want semantic mathematical documents, native typesetting, cross-document structure, vault-wide operations, and deep customization more than you want broad ecosystem compatibility.
If plain Markdown is enough, use Obsidian. If batch typesetting and source-text control are enough, use LATEX. ATHENA exists for the uncomfortable middle: interactive mathematical writing at scale.
ATHENA in action, showing a document, namespace explorer, global search and outline.
ATHENA grew out of a long attempt to maintain a serious mathematical vault. The first versions were not editors, but tools around Obsidian: exporters, indexers, metadata generators, a Markdown dialect, and a compiler supporting wikilinks, transclusions, and structured callouts. These tools eventually showed that the real problem was not conversion. The vault, the mathematical document, the search system, and the publishing pipeline needed to belong to one environment.
ATHENA is that environment: a TEXmacs-based mathematical knowledge system with vaults, namespaces, theorem anchors, search, transclusion, maintenance tools, and static website publishing.
Here are some links to the predecessors of ATHENA: Powersidian and Obindex.ps1, ob-emacs and ofmc.
| The GitHub repository of ATHENA: | https://github.com/NuaptanEvalisk/ATHENA |
| ATHENA's releases: | https://github.com/NuaptanEvalisk/ATHENA/releases |
| Structured mathematical editing. | TEXmacs-based editing for definitions, theorems, proofs, formulas, and long mathematical documents, with optimizations for real-time WYSIWYG input and typesetting. |
| Mathematical knowledge management. | ATHENA treats a mathematical archive as a knowledge vault, not a collection of standalone documents. Using enunciation-level wikilinks and transclusions, definitions, propositions, examples and more can be referenced and reused effortlessly. |
| Namespaces. | ATHENA allows you to organize your math categorically. Namespace is such an abstraction with which you no longer face the dilemma of whether to put 'lectures notes on subject X' in the directory of 'lecture notes' or the directory of 'subject X'. |
| Publishing. | In addition to exporting LATEX documents and PDFs, with ATHENA selected parts of a vault can be exported into static websites, while retaining most of the structure. You are currently looking at one. |
For the full list of ATHENA's features, go to ATHENA - Features. For more screenshots of ATHENA, go to ATHENA - Gallery.
Pre-compiled binaries for GNU/Linux and Microsoft Windows can be found on the GitHub releases page. Only x86_64 binaries are available. The AppImage is tested on openSUSE Tumbelweed and Ubuntu (in a distrobox container). Because I don't have any physical devices with Windows installed, the Windows binary is tested using wine and only basic smoke tests are included.
It is more recommended to compile ATHENA from source, which is available on GitHub. ATHENA is built with CMake and the Intel oneAPI C++ compiler (icpx) is the recommended compiler. Details about dependencies and building instructions can be found in the COMPILE file in the source repository.
ATHENA uses Qt 6 and supports Wayland on GNU/Linux natively. Although it should also be able to work with xcb, X11 support is not actively maintained. To make the Visual Studio-flavored docking experience possible, ATHENA patches the Qt Advanced Docking System and uses the xdg-toplevel-drag protocol, which Chromium also uses. This protocol is supported by the latest KDE and GNOME desktops.
ATHENA inherits the GUILE 1.8 dependency from GNU TEXmacs. You may obtain the source code of GUILE 1.8 here. One long-term plan of ATHENA is to eventually rewrite all Scheme code with C++ so dependence on GUILE would be removed.
ATHENA is free software licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3. ATHENA is a fork of GNU TEXmacs. A substantial part of the source tree comes from GNU TEXmacs and remains copyright its original authors and contributors. ATHENA-specific modifications and additions are copyright © 2026 Nuaptan Evalisk. The GPLv3 applies to ATHENA as a software program. Documents written with ATHENA, vault contents, exported PDFs, and ATHENA-generated websites remain the property of their authors unless separately licensed.
See the ATHENA - Licensing page for full copyright information and third-party notices.
ATHENA is possible because GNU TEXmacs already exists. TeXmacs provides the mathematical editing and structured typesetting foundation on which ATHENA is built.
The project also relies on the wider free-software ecosystem, including Qt, Qt Advanced Docking System, GUILE, SQLite, FreeType, ImageMagick, Ghostscript, llama.cpp, libtcc, and other libraries and tools used for the interface, document processing, indexing, export, and runtime infrastructure.
ATHENA is an independent fork and extension of TEXmacs. It is not an official GNU TEXmacs release.
ATHENA is maintained by Nuaptan Evalisk.
For bug reports, technical discussion, build issues, documentation problems, or questions about ATHENA, contact [email protected].
[Source: ATHENA - Licensing.ath]
ATHENA is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. See the GNU General Public License version 3 for details.
The no-warranty warning above is an instance of transclusion.