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."

Comments

Try LyX!

[gatzke]

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.

Re:Try LyX!

[manicb]

For me LyX was "LaTeX with training wheels"; after about a year of LyX I've moved to pure LaTeX for more complex functionality. However, I found LaTeX far less intimidating that it might have been as I was already familiar with the concepts and with the names of most functions.

Where it really excels though is in the well-thought-out system of keyboard shortcuts. I used it in the final year of my degree to take down lecture notes, including equations and derivations, and found I was generally able to keep up with a blackboard. Try that with Equation Editor!

Not just this one.

[Skidge]

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.

Re:Not just this one.

[Celarent Darii]

Is the submitter the owner of this particular version?

I wish I were. Nope, just a fan - sorry for the over enthusiasm.

Some other people also gave me by message these sites: http://www.scribtex.com/ as well as this one emulating Google docs: http://docs.latexlab.org/

Didn't know that all these services were available. Only found this by accident a few days ago and found it really useful, hence the story submission.

Latex outside academia

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Latex outside academia

[WillAdams]

I work in publishing, so use it quite a bit for any .pdf manipulation which isn't suited to pdftk, and which justifies it (as opposed to using Enfocus PitStop). Examples:

  - in-house ad design system for HS ads in phone books
  - batch processing ads to add a yellow or white background, or to scale them, sometimes asymmetrically
  - batch print graphics w/ filenames --- one instance of that was a several thousand page government publication
  - print processed graphics side-by-side w/ the original to make proofreading easier (while I worked up an AppleScript which would page forward in both .pdfs displayed in Adobe Acrobat w/ a single click people never used it)
  - unreleased system for creating galley versions of magazine / journal articles when the source text was in Typo3
  - custom typesetting system for custom story books, since taken off-line

I also use it for my own design and typesetting:

  - the freely distributed .pdf version of Mike Brotherton's Star Dragon: http://www.mikebrotherton.com/2005/04/20/new-star-dragon-pdf/ (this design made it into the Memoir documentclass along w/ some other things I contributed)
  - some entries in the TeX Showcase: http://www.tug.org/texshowcase/onetype.pdf and http://www.tug.org/texshowcase/peace_on_earth.pdf
  - books which I typeset and print so as to bind them by hand: http://mysite.verizon.net/william_franklin_adams/portfolio/typography/thebookoftea.pdf

William

Purpose of LaTeX

[Ossifer]

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.

Re:Awesome

[JohnHammersley]

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.

Thanks - we've designed writeLaTeX to make it easier to collaborate especially with users who are new to LaTeX or used to WYSIWYG editors. (I'm one of the developers of writeLaTeX and have just returned from my valentine meal out to find us on slashdot!!) Hope the site has been performing ok during the spike in traffic, and if you've any questions just let me know or contact us through the site. Any and all feedback appreciated! John

Re:Writing LaTeX directly is often unnecessary

[dgatwood]

LaTeX is basically a write-only language. Almost nothing else can read it except for other TeX variants. And TeX is pretty much a one-trick pony. It does only one thing particularly well: produce fixed-layout PostScript/PDF pages. Other output formats are bolted-on hacks. The problem is that PDF and PostScript are terrible for electronic publishing because of wide variations in screen size and resolution. All the fancy typesetting that looks great on an 8.5"x11" printed page looks lousy when you shrink the PDF down to fit on a seven inch Kindle or Nook screen. For this reason, most electronic publishing is done using HTML so that the reading devices can reflow the content freely to fit the screen. (This is arguably less true for textbooks, mind you.)

Although I'm told that the LaTeX path to HTML has improved a lot since I last tried to use it, you're still starting from source material that was designed for fixed-layout publishing, complete with formatting instructions, and trying to cram that into a non-fixed-layout publishing scheme. Such an inherently lossy transformation can never feasibly produce results that are as good as you would get if you started out with a proper separation between the formatting information and the content, e.g. authoring in DocBook XML and transforming it to HTML and LaTeX as post-processing steps.