Slashdot Mirror
Collaborative LaTeX Editor With Preview In Your Web Browser
Celarent Darii writes "Slashdot readers have undoubtedly heard of Google Docs and the many other online word processing solutions that run in the browser. However, as a long-time user of TeX and LaTeX, these solutions are not my favorite way of doing things. Wouldn't it be nice to TeX something in your browser? Well, look no further, there is now an online collaborative LaTeX editor with integrated rapid preview. Some fantastic features: quasi-instant preview, automatic versioning of source, easy collaboration and you can even upload files and pictures. Download your project later when you get home. Are you a TeX guru with some masterpieces? Might I suggest uploading them? For the beginner: you can start here."
LyX is a great free cross-platform document processor that uses LaTeX on the back end for export.
Not exactly WYSIWYG, but close enough. You export to PS or PDF as needed.
You can see basically what your equations look like while editing before you tex it. You can still use normal LaTeX commands too, but anyone with basic Word experience can jump right in.
I have used it for tons of things for over a decade now.
Most exciting thing I've seen all day! Right now I use a subversion repository to collaborate with my coauthors, but my advisor isn't very technical and can't seem to figure it out half the time. This is going to be much easier.
Why should I do with an online only service what I can already do on my laptop?
The service is closed source also and it is impossible to self host it.
No thanks.
I'm allergic to it, so I use sheepskin instead.
I feel sorry for people that don't drink, because when they get up in the morning, that's as good as they're gonna feel
While the summary makes it sound like this is some breakthrough idea, there are several similar sites out there:
https://www.sharelatex.com/
http://spandex.io/
And others, I'm sure. Is the submitter the owner of this particular version? The marketing speak is a bit over-the-top.
I used sharelatex for a group project last semester and it worked fine. Several features were added since then that make it likely I'll use it again.
I loved using Latex when I was in school. I used it not only for dissertations, but also for assignments. But I can't find any use for it outside academia. At least not at my current job. Does anyone have any stories where they use Latex outside a university?
I just looked at the package called Chemfig, for drawing organic molecules in LateX. Wow, let's toss out 25 years of progress.
it would be super cool to be able to rsync my figures to my account. that's probably asking too much though. plus they don't take .eps files??
plus they don't take .eps files??
My total speculative guess is that they're using pdflatex to render rather than traditional latex, and haven't bothered to implement conversions between image formats.
There is a pretty good looking editor for Latex called Bakoma. What I have never understood with latex is that it is hard to find an editor that does exactly what this website does. You type on the left and it appears on the right. But I want one step further. You also can edit on the right. To me this would be the best of both worlds. You can go all hard core for formulas and other complicated formatting but then you can go all WYSIWYG if you want. Oh and I want a spell check in both the the latex and WYSIWYG panes along with code completion in the latex pane.
Talking with peers in the TeX world, I find that few professionals are writing in LaTeX directly anymore. LaTeX's typesetting abilities remain sexy, but it is far between to keep a document in a semantic markup like Docbook XML, transforming it to LaTeX via an XSL stylesheet only when one wants to produce final print output.
Writing a LaTeX document directly might be OK for students who do only one or two papers a year, or someone who needs to quickly get a math notation graphic. But if LaTeX is something you do regularly, far better to setup a workflow where it is just a stage transforming data kept in a more structured format.
You neglect to mention it costs 55 euros at its cheapest.
Breakthrough idea, maybe not. A different realization with distinct advantages, maybe.
This lacks continuously-updated rendering, which I think is a key feature of writelatex.
This looks like it might actually be better than writelatex for most uses (I particularly like the advertised dropbox integration, and revision control features), though it has the distinct disadvantage for use where I work that, unlike writelatex, the UI is completely borked with IE8 (yes, I know that I shouldn't be using IE and especially not out-of-date IE, but I don't get to dictate that at my workplace.)
Collaborative editing is always a pain in the ... At east, with this tool you don't have to change the language.
These are all internet based SaaS services. Where are the ones that can be downloaded and set up locally on intranets and such? Nowhere. There hasn't been one single working solution.
That would however be very useful, and not just for companies but also for those who want to be sure their data is in good hands, or those that want the freedom to tinker and really extend those services.
The only available solution is etherpad lite, but it is just and editor and lacks the document management side, authentication and other necessary features. That hasn't been one single credible project to extend it either.
While there is certainly value in continuous as-you-type output rendering of LaTex, remember that the purpose of LaTeX is typesetting, not word processing. The value is that you describe to (La)TeX how you want things to be rendered and rely upon it doing the right thing, which it nearly always does, beautifully.
You can change something, restructure, re-order, re-design etc. and everything falls perfectly (usually) into place. This is not the case with the WYSIWYG word processing systems--the closest they get to this is the rather limited "styles" presets.
https://www.sharelatex.com/
yes i completely agree, that is probably the reason why. still rather disappointed, though.
hahaha
VP for Community Development of SpanDeX here. I just wanted to second Skidge's point that there are other options out there, one being SpanDeX. To an earlier comment, we also just released our API so that users can open what would otherwise be downloadable templates and TeX files directly into SpanDeX from inside their browser.
SpanDeX Site Integration
Always good to spread the news about the rapidly-expanding cloud-based LaTeX options, but there are many and there should be as much exposure to the lot as possible!
https://www.sharelatex.com/
And that's it.
\includegraphics[width=0.49\textwidth]{numiter.eps}
When I tried to upload the numiter.eps file, I am getting a message that it has an unsupported extension.
-Matyas
Thanks to Timothy for posting about writeLaTeX on here - I'm one of the developers and just got in from my Valentines day meal out to see the post! It's great to see the whole cloud-based LaTeX community taking off (as others have pointed out, there are lots of options out there for online LaTeX editing) - we've done a lot of work with the guys at LaTeX-Community.org and TeXample.net to allow all of their LaTeX examples to be opened in writeLaTeX with a single click for editing and sharing - we hope this is helping new and existing LaTeX users work together more effectively. Thanks for all the feedback - more to come from us soon, so we hope you like what we've done so far :-)
John
Thanks for the comments - accepting .eps files (and some other improvements to file management) are on our work-in-progress list (I'm one of the developers at writeLaTeX). We've been rolling out updates fairly regularly, and so the site will continue to evolve and (hopefully) improve over the coming weeks and months.
I'm one of the developers. Your speculation is correct! but we are working on a converter. Thanks for the feedback :)
When I was in college and enamored with all things OSS I tried really hard to get into LaTeX. But it seems to me that as time progresses and our method of interacting with our computers via GUIs is more entrenched that it's kind of a dying notion. Of course, there are people who still use it (and will undoubtedly loudly criticize this post), but I would be willing to wager that it's dwindling. Even when I submitted an article to IEEE for official publications they had LaTeX files and they also had MS Word templates, I used the Word template.
i thought this article was going to be about a new type of 3D printer D:
The existence of which is why I now cheerfully ignore the details of LaTex.
I edit all my LaTeX source in Emacs, which will still be around long after this is gone. I'll protect my muscle-memory investment with Emacs.
I think the value of as-you-type rendering is very loosely analogous to that of having automated continuous as-you-type parsing and syntax error highlighting combined with compile/build/test cycles that run on source file saves when programming, in terms of providing rapid feedback that what you are doing is what you mean to do and catching errors while you are mentally "close" to them.
great job, keep up the good work! I'll convert some of my figures, it's worth giving your site a try.
If you can upload that style file (tcilatex.sty? it's been a while since I had a Scientific Workplace job) into the system, then yes, you'll be able to work in your comfortable GUI, upload your mangled files filled w/ ugly little hacks and others will be able to edit them. So long as none of your collaborators are offended enough by the ugly little bits which SWP adds to the source to take them out, you'll be able to d/l their changes and continue to work in SWP.
Really though, you should dump all your files to plain LaTeX, import them into LyX and try that. It's a much better program.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Looked around a bit and found FreeCAD, so will have to try that.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
pretty sure you can do this easily in emacs, bouncing back and forth, or even side by side, if I'm not mistaken.