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Real Time LaTeX Collaboration Online

sharelatex.com

58 pointsryanatallah15 comments

Hey creator of ShareLaTeX here, we didn't post on here (again) but we have been releasing a lot of new stuff since the last time the site was on the home page about 1 year ago to the day. Split view, command auto complete, multiple compilers and history are all done. Spell check, git integration and dropbox sync are just around the corner.

The main thing that has happend is merging with http://www.scribtex.com with both of us now working on ShareLaTeX full time.

Thank you for all the support and feedback we have been receiving, its been wonderful, please keep letting us know what you think!

I've used sharelatex in the past, and it is really useful.

I do like the site, but I've seen it on the front page multiple times...

e.g.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3549802

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4925367

I would be interested to know the advantages of this compared to working on a file in a shared git or svn depository?

You don't need to learn git/svn and you do not need to setup a repository.

I think the most important thing is you don't have to setup the compiler yourself. It may get out of hand pretty quickly if your partners and you don't have compatible environments (Windows vs. Linux, etc.).

Oh, I forgot about that! Of course!

I'm one of the co-founders of ShareLaTeX, and there are two main reasons that we've found that people really like ShareLaTeX. The first has been mentioned - you don't need to set up a LaTeX repository yourself. Even more than that, you can work on LaTeX documents from anywhere. It tends to be hard to find LaTeX installed on a computer if you're on the move and not using your own machine.

The other advantage is the ease of collaboration. While there are plenty of people in the LaTeX world who know git, there are plenty that don't as well. ShareLaTeX gives everyone a point and click way to make sure they are in sync with their collaborators. That said, we're getting quite close to offering git access to the projects for people who want it.

Also, my apologies that we keep appearing on the front page (along with a few other similar sites). We're flattered that people keep submitting us though.

I use ShareLatex often.

They did just roll out syntax completion for some of the common items (begin, subsection, subsubsection), and their new 'split screen' feature is rather nice.

I do see it on HN often as well....

Can you track changes? If you can this would be Very helpful for authors like myself that use LaTeX to write books. Could just invite the proofers.

Yes, we have a feature called 'History' which you can access from the editor. It lets you see the changes that have been made to your project over time. It's a bit of minimum-viable-feature at the moment, but it's still quite useful, and we're always open to feedback on how to improve it for your needs.

You should think of including support for latexdiff (http://www.ctan.org/pkg/latexdiff). People will love that I believe.

Yes, we'd love to do that. I coded up a prototype a while ago and found that latexdiff can quite easily get confused and produce LaTeX code that won't compile. I definitely plan to revisit this though and try to get something working.

Google docs has had a labs project for latex for a while: http://docs.latexlab.org/

When I saw the domain name, I was kinda hoping for it to be a social condom sharing application.

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