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Comment by friggeri | Hacker News Reader

After using LaTeX for the past ~8 years one thing I have noticed is that instant preview is not adapted at all: LaTeX compilation is simply too slow. I prefer compiling when I want to see how things turn out after making a bunch of changes rather than having the compiler throw out a bunch of errors — and breaking my workflow — just because for some reason it decided it should recompile while I was in the middle of writing a macro.

Another minor quibble I have with these kind of services is that they often only support [pdf]latex, I'd like to be able to use [xe|lua]tex (after having a taste of fontspec/unimath I simply can't go back).

Other than that, great project!

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I'm using LyX for all my LaTeX editing now. The editing and instant preview for math are wonderful.

I'd love to see a live-collaborative LyX... I'd like to see a live-collaborative everything, but most open-source codebases make so many assumptions about a single editor per buffer/document, or a single cursor per buffer/document, that adding collaborative functionality is a gargantuan and very application-specific task. I don't think it's even possible to find a general strategy for making the necessary modifications, but if someone were to figure out how, they'd be the most in-demand consultant in tech, that's for sure.

The 'compile in the middle of my macro' problem is a tricky one. writeLaTeX won't interrupt you with errors while you keep typing, but that's the best I've managed so far.

Support for other backends is definitely planned.

Thanks for the feedback!

I'm not sure instant preview is a compelling feature. The whole point of LaTeX is to put content before layout.

And how is instant preview hindering your ability to put content first?

It doesn't necessarily, but I find myself spending too much time tweaking visual appearance and layout if I compile too often. I prefer (if I can manage the self-control) to write up a semantically oriented LaTeX document and then only do a round of layout-tweaking (e.g. babying the figure-placement algorithm) at the end.

I really wish there were Latex editors that would preview just the equation you're currently editing. I know macros make that tricky, but it would be a killer feature for anyone getting started with Latex.

preview-latex (bundled with AUCTeX these days) comes pretty close to this.

I believe that AUCTeX [1] does essentially this in EMACS. It embeds a preview of each equation into the buffer, but I don't know whether it's smart enough to handle macros.

[1] http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/AUCTeX

Creator of writeLaTeX here...

I find the auto-preview useful when I'm making tables or figures. It also enables some cool stuff, like this 'workbook'-like document that I recently did with a friend: http://writelatex.com/4134bzfwng

There should be probably be a way to turn off the preview, though.

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