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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious how it compares to Overleaf in terms of features? Putting aside the AI aspect entirely, I'm simply curious if this is a viable Overleaf competitor -- especially since it's free.

I do self-host Overleaf which is annoying but ultimately doable if you don't want to pay the $21/mo (!).

I do have to wonder for how long it will be free or even supported, though. On the one hand, remote LaTeX compiling gets expensive at scale. On the other hand, it's only a fraction of a drop in the bucket compared to OpenAI's total compute needs. But I'm hesitant to use it because I'm not convinced it'll still be around in a couple of years.

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Overleaf is a little curious to me. What's the point? Just install LaTeX. Claude is very good at manipulating LaTeX documents and I've found it effective at fixing up layouts for me.

I can code in monospace (of course) but I just can't write in monospace markup. I need something approaching WYSIWIG. It's just how my brain works -- I need the italics to look like italics, I need the footnote text to not interrupt the middle of the paragraph.

The visual editor in Overleaf isn't true WYSIWIG, but it's close enough. It feels like working in a word processor, not in a code editor. And the interface overall feels simple and modern.

(And that's just for solo usage -- it's really the collaborative stuff that turns into a game-changer.)

I use inkdrop for this, then pandoc to go from markdown to latex, then a final typesetting pass. Inkdrop is great for WYSIWYG markdown editing.

Same for me. I wrote my PhD in LyX for that reason.

In my circles the killer features of Overleaf are the collaborative ones (easy sharing, multi-user editing with track changes/comments). Academic writing in my community basically went from emailed draft-new-FINAL-v4.tex files (or a shared folder full of those files) to basically people just dumping things on Overleaf fairly quickly.

collaboration is the killer feature tbh. overleaf is basically google docs meets latex.. you can have multiple coauthors editing simultaneously, leave comments, see revision history, etc.

a lot of academics aren't super technical and don't want to deal with git workflows or syncing local environments. they just want to write their fuckin' paper (WTFP).

overleaf lets the whole research team work together without anyone needing to learn version control or debug their local texlive installation.

also nice for quick edits from any machine without setting anything up. the "just install it locally" advice assumes everyones comfortable with that, but plenty of researchers treat computers as appliances lol.

I am curious if Git + Local install can solve this collaboration issue with Pull Requests?

Collaboration is at best rocky when people have different versions of LaTeX packages installed. Also merging changes from multiple people in git are a pain when dealing with scientific, nuanced text.

Overleaf ensures that everyone looks at the same version of the document and processes the document with the same set of packages and options.

To add to the points raised by others, "just install LaTeX" is not imo a very strong argument. I prefer working in a local environment, but many of my colleagues much prefer a web app that "just works" to figuring out what MiKTeX is.

I'd use git in this case, I am sure there are other reasons to use overleaf otherwise it wouldn't exist but this seems like a solved issue with git.

you can use git with overleaf, but from practical experience: getting even "mathematically/technically inclined" people to consistently use git takes a lot of time... which one could spend on other more fun things :-)

You can use actually git (it's also integrated in Overleaf).

You can even export ZIP files if you like (for any cloud service, it's not a bad idea to clone your repo once in a while to avoid begin stuck in case of unlikely downtime).

I have both a hosted instance (thanks to Overleaf/ShareLaTeX Ltd.) and I'm also paying user for the pro group license (>500€/year) for my research team. It's great - esp. for smaller research teams - to have the maintenance outsourced to a commercial provider.

On a good day, I'd spend 40% in Overleaf, 10% in Sublime/Emacs, 20% in Email and 10% in Google Scholar/Semantics Scholar and 10% in EasyChair/OpenReview, the rest in meetings.

Latex is such a nightmare to work with locally

LaTeX ecosystem is a UX nightmare, coming from someone who had to deal with it recently. Overleaf just works.

"Just install LaTeX" is really not a valid response when the LaTeX toolchain is a genuine nightmare to work with. I could do it but still use Overleaf. Managing that locally is just not worth it.

The first three things are, in this order: collaborative editing, collaborative editing, collaborative editing. Seriously, this cannot be understated.

Then: The LaTeX distribution is always up-to-date; you can run it on limited resources; it has an endless supply of conference and journal templates (so you don't have to scavenge them yourself off a random conference/publisher website); Git backend means a) you can work offline and b) version control comes in for free. These just off the top of my head.

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