Rich text editing with WriteLatex

Amazingly functional site for working with Latex documents! For example, I am working on screencast re: containers/docker right now, and created several diagrams using their editor, see: http://i.imgur.com/NlYuaXp.png

If this type of stuff interests you, make sure you check out http://texample.net/tikz/examples/all/ & http://tex.stackexchange.com too. Also, if you want to try and play around with it, use the "Create A New Paper" link @ https://www.writelatex.com/docs?template=paper

Here's the code I'm using:

  \documentclass[12pt]{article}
  \usepackage{tikz}
  \usepackage{verbatim}
  \usetikzlibrary{positioning}
  \begin{document}
  \pagestyle{empty}

  \begin{tikzpicture}[scale=.9,every node/.style={minimum size=1cm},on grid]
           
      \begin{scope}[
              yshift=-83,every node/.append style={
              yslant=0.5,xslant=-1},yslant=0.5,xslant=-1
              ]

          \fill[white,fill opacity=.9] (0,0) rectangle (5,5);
          \draw[black,very thick] (0,0) rectangle (5,5);
      \end{scope}
       
      \begin{scope}[
          yshift=0,every node/.append style={
              yslant=0.5,xslant=-1},yslant=0.5,xslant=-1
                         ]
          \fill[white,fill opacity=.9] (0,0) rectangle (5,5);
          \draw[black,very thick] (0,0) rectangle (5,5);
    \end{scope}
       
    \begin{scope}[
        yshift=90,every node/.append style={
        yslant=0.5,xslant=-1},yslant=0.5,xslant=-1
                         ]
        \fill[white,fill opacity=0.9] (0,0) rectangle (5,5);
        \draw[black,dashed] (0,0) rectangle (5,5);
    \end{scope}
       
    \draw[-latex,thick] (6.2,2) node[right]{$\mathsf{Web\ Server}$}
         to[out=180,in=90] (3,2);
    \draw[-latex,thick](5.9,5)node[right]{$\mathsf{Your\ App}$}
        to[out=180,in=90] (2,5);
    \draw[-latex,thick,red](4.3,-1.9)node[right]{$\mathsf{rootfs}$}
        to[out=180,in=90] (2,-.5);

  \end{tikzpicture}

  \end{document}

Amazing additions, to bad it's not open source like ShareLatex. Will probably use this when working with none techsavy people.

Shameless plug: Do you need generated LaTeX documents, or just partial pieces, like tables and plots. In that case PyLaTeX[0] is probably worth looking at.

0. https://github.com/JelteF/PyLaTeX

The Sage Cloud also had great support for Latex, with much of the same functionality as WriteLatex. http://cloud.sagemath.com

The site is way impressive. I recently produce a resume using it. One of the best features I didn't see mentioned was the fact that it either stores everything locally or in such a way that a local cookie identifies you uniquely to the server, even if you are not logged in. So if your computer happens to shutdown during editing, or if you close the tab, or whatever, returning to the website will drop you in right where you left off. The only complaint I had was the delay on auto-updating, but the manual updating was more then sufficient.

I remember seeing a UNIX Motif application capable of live editing back in 1999 (way better than Lyx), when visiting a professor on my university.

Somehow they never became widespread.

Actually recommended this site to my Discrete Math students last Fall (this and sharelatex). They seemed to like it a lot.

I was thinking about why this didn't exist already, just days ago. Great way to start playing with Latex.

If they could support "track changes" like MSWord, I know a publisher that would die for this.

It complained about a Swedish character ('ä') and errored out for me.

Locally I use TeXWorks with the XeLaTeX "output" and it handles it fine...

not support chinese