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Comment by JohnHammersley | Hacker News Reader

You might also want to check out Overleaf[1] -- it offers a rich text (WYSIWYG) layer on top of a full LaTeX distribution, with an automatic preview of the compiled document alongside the source in the browser.

It's geared primarily towards research papers and associated material, but can be used for anything! One of the first projects (not by the founders) was a set of wedding invitations!

[1] https://www.overleaf.com

PS: In case you can't guess, I'm one of the founders, and any feedback is always appreciated, thanks.

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I am a huge fan of overleaf. I use it almost every day to take class notes, write up homework, etc. Two features which I see heavily requested are speed (people who compare overleaf to sharelatex often cite this as the reason they use sharelatex over overleaf) and offline editing. Thanks again for the great software!

I've got a question for you since you mentioned that you use it to take class notes. I have attempted this in the past and I have found it pretty hard to keep up with a professor while they talk and write things down. When it is just straight speech I am taking notes of there is no problem of course since it is just normal text. But when math starts being quickly written on a board I find it hard to keep up.

Writing out all the symbols names and getting the formatting right seems to take a fair amount of time and I typically get behind.

I have a Microsoft Surface I use for class, so what I have just switched to handwriting the notes now on the surface.

I guess my reply wasn't worded so well. I don't really mean in-class notes. In class, I do the same thing you do - I write everything down on paper. In the past I have tried to type everything and ran into the same problem you stated. What I currently do is move most of my written notes into class independent documents on Overleaf. It then become easy to create study guides for exams since all of my notes can be printed and shared from a single document. Sorry for the confusion!

Are you able to save your notes out of Overleaf in the free version? It looks like a nice service but I don't want to pay to have offline access to notes especially since I like to have a nice git repo with all my old notes backed up.

Yes, you can use the git sync for this :) https://www.overleaf.com/blog/195

Is that available to free users?

Can I edit my overleaf stuff while offline? Gitbook looks like you edit offline and send changes to the cloud, while overleaf looks like you can't work if your connection dies, on a plane etc.

We have a git-bridge for offline working - it's in beta at the moment but has been pretty popular: https://www.overleaf.com/blog/195

It's not the same as having a full offline mode, but it certainly helps.

You should run a more modern LaTeX engine, such as XeLaTeX or LuaLaTeX. I can’t type diacritical characters (ąęłóż) without going to the past and figuring out the necessary encoding things.

You can already use these with Overleaf if you need to :)

We try to detect which compile engine to use, and you can always specify it manually in the editor settings. Just click the gear icon in the top right.

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