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Comment by jmmcd | Hacker News Reader

I don't get it. I can't see any information on the homepage that makes it different from just using github.

Our main two differences from github is that we built banyan to be version control for "humans". Our mac application for example is extremely simple to use, and was designed with an 18 year old undergraduate/55 year old lab veteran in mind. Banyan was designed to be the middle ground of collaboration for users who know git with people who have no idea what git is (and in most cases, cant be bothered to learn another tool).

Our second difference is our focus on scientific specific tools like latex, ipython, etc.

So, are you going to provide built-in things like: IPython viewer (like http://nbviewer.ipython.org/), LaTeX viewer for notes (like http://mathb.in/), support for slides (this thing would be awesome - to have possibility to view them and view/fork their source; a bit related to http://slidewiki.org/) or something in that line?

We have similar ideas for integrations with those tools, with the exception of latex. With latex, we have our own online editor with some neat git integration.

Do you have any examples of these online? Today, I don't see any reason I would use this over GitHub.

I gather that your Mac app may be simpler, but it's not available yet.

Since I don't already have dozens of projects on banyan, it's hard to see the value.

Perhaps it would be a good idea to link to some repos with examples of the fancy LaTeX or IPython formatting

Out of curiosity, why is underscore.js the sample repo on your homepage?

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