Online, collaborative LaTeX editor | Hacker News Reader

Online, collaborative LaTeX editor

sharelatex.com

49 pointsmrb21 comments

We are using a sharelatex installation at work and so far it's pretty good. But the installation is a nightmare. There is a docker container available but the documentation is pretty scattered across multiple GitHub repo wikis. And when you got it to run with all environment variables, you need to install all latex packages inside the container. So unless you hack your way around it by using an additional volume with a working receive installation, you need to install latex from scratch each time you update the container.

ShareLaTeX Co-founder here. I'm glad that it works well for you once set up!

As for the installation, I know, this bit kind of sucks, sorry :( How long ago did you last install/upgrade? My co-founder is working pretty much full time on improving the ease of installation and configuration. One of the difficulties is that we use a lot of small services, which is great for large scale deployment, but a bit of a nightmare for producing a single standalone installable service with a unified config system. We're getting there though, and it's a priority at the moment. If you've got any feedback or problems you hit, please reach out at team@sharelatex.com. Thanks!

> it's a priority at the moment

Out of curiosity: wouldn't improving the self-hosting experience cannibalize subscriptions of your paid plans?

Possibly slightly, but it's outweighed by the benefits of having an open-source self-hosted option (both for our business model and the greater good of the world).

Our working hypothesis is that people fall into one of two categories (possibly both, but only one at a time):

a) Those who just want a simple to use LaTeX environment that just works for their task at hand.

b) Those who are more interested in the tech, and happy to install software locally, happy to explore things like git for collaboration and really refine their own personal workflows with the tools they like.

The paid plans are used by people in category (a) and would never be of much interest to those in category (b). But the self-hosted option is great for some people in category (b).

We also have a paid version of self-hosted ShareLaTeX, with direct support from us, and enterprise features like LDAP, admin controls for managing thousands of users, etc. The open-source version forms a natural part of this, (see GitLab, etc)

Or c) Those who are interested in tech and the possibility of a open-source self-hosted option, but too busy to install and maintain it so also paying for a subscription like those in category (a).

We (my small research group) chose it over Authorea and others because of this possibility and implication that we won't get caught in a vendor lock-in situation in the future.

Exactly! That's what I meant by "possibly both, but only one at a time". At the moment you're in group (a), but might shift to group (b) later. I'd guess that if and when that shift occurs, we'd lose you as a paid user, regardless of whether we had an open-source version or not. This way at least you get an easier transition, and you'd still be using 'ShareLaTeX' which helps us from a brand recognition POV.

I have to applaud your attitude. And your strategy. It's actually pretty clever to support the host your own so people can see it's a way to avoid lock-in.

I took a foundations of CS and algorithms class a couple years ago. Problem sets were done in groups and had to be submitted typed (preferably in LaTeX). This site saved my ass more times than I can count.

How does this compare feature-wise to Overleaf, which, while it does not have realtime collaboration, does allow for collaborators (for free) and offers Dropbox integration for cheaper.

I can not test the collaboration features, as they are not free. It seems it offers Google-style true real-time collaboration, whereas on Overleaf random chunks of text just appear and editing the same paragraph together never works.

I imported a report I wrote in Overleaf, and I must say I'm impressed.

Rendering is not automatic, but much quicker and of higher quality. (selectable text vs blury images in Overleaf) In Overleaf you sometimes spend quite a bit of time waiting if your long equation in a long report turned out correct, only to find out someone else made a syntax error.

Error reporting is also much better. In Overleaf an error in your bib file would usually generate an opaque error that leaves you hunting for the missing bracket. It remains to be seen how this works out in a collaborative setting.

While Overleaf also let you jump to the code corresponding to the rendering, ShareLatex goes both ways. Neither of them are very reliable, but it's a useful feature when it works.

I've not tested it, but it seems ShareLatex allows you to choose the LaTeX engine and keybindings. So Vim/Emacs users will probably like this.

Thanks for the feedback (I'm one of the Overleaf founders). Just to address a few of your points:

1) You can choose a pdf preview, which is much sharper -- it's currently in beta which is why it's not the default, but you can choose it via the settings menu (click the gear icon in the top right in the editor)

2) You can jump both ways in Overleaf too -- right click on some text in the editor and choose "position in preview"

3) You can choose from a number of different LaTeX engines and keybindings on Overleaf too -- again, via the settings menu in the editor.

Hope this helps, and thanks again for the feedback.

Thank! That's very helpful.

We did most of our university project reports in Overleaf. Many of us first time LaTeX users coming from Google Drive. For me it's been great, but many struggled without the instant feedback that Google drive gives you. (both compile times, errors and edits of other users)

Thanks for the review/feedback! You've identified two things that we've put a lot of work into at ShareLaTeX: Good real-time collaboration, and fast good PDF previews. Getting these right have been core to the whole product - when it works you don't really notice, but if it doesn't work perfectly, it's really frustrating. Collaboration and our scalable LaTeX rendering infrastructure are probably where most of the complexity and 'cleverness' in our code lies, so it's nice to know it's well received :)

These will definitely help convert Google Drive users. As a developer I'm more used to the edit-compile-verify cycle, but it's still nice.

Also made me rewatch Inventing on Principle https://vimeo.com/36579366

I agree with most points above. But one thing I've found invaluable with Overleaf is its git bridge. This allows me to continue working on a paper from within emacs, using git as I normally would, and then sync to the server where my co-authors are comfortable (using the web interface). I know of ShareLaTeX's support for github, but as I understand it the repository must be public (a non-starter while working on a paper that won't be public for months). I would be very happy to learn I am mistaken about the last point, though that may still mean that a paid github account is necessary to use a private repo. I would immediately pay for a premium ShareLaTeX account if there were an equivalent git bridge that I could use to sync with git repos on my own server.

I made my resume and other misc. uni papers on this site. Super nifty!

Same. Very useful.

We tried to use locally installed sharelatex instead of our SVN papers repository in our research group. Good god, did we switch back really quick - not only the install process is godawful (no proper docs, outdated instruction, outdated dockerfile, missing docker-compose, took me a week to figure it out), absence of any stability along with zero way to administer it properly (no UI for users management, you have to send commands through shell to provide admin rights) just killed it for us. :\

Competitors in online LaTeX, with links to pricing plans:

- OverLeaf (formerly WriteLaTeX) - https://www.overleaf.com/ - https://www.overleaf.com/plans

- Papeeria - Cloud research platform Online LaTeX and Markdown editor and plot compiler. Free, fast and reliable. - http://papeeria.com/ - https://papeeria.com/about/pricing

- ShareLatex - LaTeX, evolved - https://www.sharelatex.com - https://www.sharelatex.com/user/subscription/plans

- LaTeX Base - https://latexbase.com - https://www.reddit.com/r/LaTeX/comments/4tn6vf/latex_base_on... - https://latexbase.com/p/b0a174a5-09b3-4598-9686-3a73be2dc8e5 - https://latexbase.com/static/overview - https://latexbase.com/static/pricing

- Authorea - https://www.authorea.com - https://www.authorea.com/user_plans

- SageMathCloud [disclaimer: I wrote the LaTeX editor for this] - https://cloud.sagemath.com - https://cloud.sagemath.com/policies/pricing.html

I've been using this to typeset all my assignments and reports for school, additionally my resume. great find, saved me tons of time and flexible enough to let me be able to pick off where I left off from anywhere. I do wish there were free student packages to offer versioning my work with Github.

For those self hosting, you can also run ShareLaTeX from Sandstorm (https:sandstorm.io) - that should make self hosting significantly easier, but the last update was in Nov, 2015..

Reply on news.ycombinator.com