Comment by abdullahkhalids | Hacker News Reader

Comment by abdullahkhalids | Hacker News Reader

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abdullahkhalids

I am looking for solution for collaborating online with my math research colleagues using a virtual whiteboard. Unfortunately, most browser based whiteboards run out of memory or have other issues - I am talking about 3-4 hour long sessions consisting of dozens of pages of math. Right now, we take turns sharing our screens on zoom and writing on our own whiteboard software (OpenBoard, some Mac whiteboard etc.). This is less than ideal because only one person can write at a time, which is not how we work in person on paper or actual whiteboards.

The best I have found is http://www.styluslabs.com/ But our one session with it ended with repeated disconnections and one person couldn't even connect. Not to mention it is completely insecure (http connections), and the whiteboard part of the software is not that impressive.

Any suggestions?

Im looking into building a research collaboration platform, would like it to be like a google drive with markdown/latex.

Does that sound something appealing to work in a web document, instead of white boarding?

There are plenty of text based collaboration platforms, like Overleaf or Google/Microsoft docs etc, and they work well.

They do not replicate how scientists actually work in person. Text is often the last step, after much free form work on whiteboards and paper. That is what is missing from the market right now.

Overleaf provides collaborative LaTeX [0]

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

last time I used it, it didn't play well with simultaneous editing

Microsoft Whiteboard has been good for extremely large network planning diagrams for me. Probably not nearly as many individual strokes though so not sure how it performs in that regard. It is available a MS Store App on Windows and it's accessible in the browser via O365.

Excalidraw?

https://excalidraw.com

Perhaps drawpile: https://drawpile.net/ is worth a look. I have seen people create rather large artworks with it, you even have support for pressure sensitivity. It does not run on tablets though as there is only a desktop version.

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