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ShareLaTeX Joins Overleaf
- jsvcycling 9y agoI've never used Overleaf, but for several years I used ShareLaTeX as my primary LaTeX editor. I've since switched to using LaTeX through emacs but I still regularly use ShareLaTeX's great documentation and if I didn't carrying my Linux laptop around everywhere, I'd probably still be using ShareLaTeX. Hopefully this new partnership won't ruin it.
- y4mi 9y agoEh, I've used both and have to say that overleafs interface is way better... So no, it won't ruin it.
- benrbray 9y agoOverleaf has its advantages (e.g. better git integration) but I haven't heard much praise for their editor. In my own experience, the Overleaf editor is slower and more cumbersome to use than ShareLaTeX. It's much harder to rearrange files and compile time to PDF is much slower. You also can't set your main doc to be in a subdirectory of the project. I hope this partnership means we'll soon have the ShareLaTeX frontend on top of the Overleaf backend. That would be a truly powerful combination.
- Tijdreiziger 9y agoThat seems to be what they're aiming for: "The ShareLaTeX editor will be at the core of the new platform, on top of the Overleaf ecosystem."
- cyphar 9y ago> Yes. Both Overleaf and ShareLaTeX are committed to ensuring that all of the open ShareLaTeX code base will remain open source and will continue to be actively developed. That's a fairly disengenous answer to the question. The code is AGPLv3+ licensed and they are not the sole copyright holder (it is true that that have a CLA[1] but from a quick reading the CLA says that they "agree to also license the Contribution under the terms of the license or licenses which We are using for the Material on the Submission Date"). What people want to know is whether ShareLaTeX is going to just become a tiny free software part of a larger proprietary platform. It appears to me that this is likely going to be the case, which is a real shame since I've always respected that the entireity of ShareLaTeX was AGPLv3+. I hope ShareLaTeX doesn't become another victim of "Our Incredible Journey"[2]. [1]: https://sharelatex.wufoo.com/forms/sharelatex-contributor-license-agreement/ https://sharelatex.wufoo.com/forms/sharelatex-contributor-li... [2]: https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/ https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/
- JohnHammersley 9y agoOverleaf founder here: We’re going to make sure that there is still an open source version that you can download and run yourself. We’re still working out the details of how we’ll do that, but if that involves open sourcing parts of Overleaf, then that's what we'll do.
- CalChris 9y agoOverLeaf user here. Thank you. It's awesome.
- blingojames 9y agoMe too, it's awesome indeed, not sure we could have collaborated without it. Many thanks.
- robotresearcher 9y agoThat's a nice decision. Thanks for committing to it so quickly in public. Props. Good luck with the product merge. Don't wreck it with complexity :)
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- storrgie 9y agoAlmost all of my team has individual subscriptions to sharelatex because we felt it was better from a books perspective to show there is more individual interest in an open source solution than corporate interest. We specifically chose sharelatex instead of overleaf so we could host our own instance. We've largely moved away from using sharelatex but still keep our subscriptions active as a form of support for continued development. I hope what you say is true about the commitment to open source.
- JohnHammersley 9y agoThanks storrgie -- I'd like to echo James' point (in his reply to pfooti) that this is very much two teams coming together to build on each others strengths, and we see the open source aspect of ShareLaTeX as an important part of that.
- kronos29296 9y agoOkay so instead of two competing products we now have one.
- mk321 9y agoWhy it is better than offline editor (like TeXnicCenter) and code repository (like Git)?
- cyphar 9y agoI've used ShareLaTeX before, and it's sort of the same reason why Dropbox is (sometimes) better than using rsync. Yes, I would prefer to edit everything in Vim but personally LaTeX environments have always been more pain to setup than they've been worth, and ShareLaTeX just works. Also they support collaborative editing and adding editor notes to a document.
- Nullabillity 9y ago`pacman -S texlive-most` pretty much just works as well.
- pletnes 9y agoSharelatex has vim bindings that are quite good.
- cyphar 9y agoYeah, but I find that nothing really matches the real Vim or Neovim. Especially since I have a lot of macros and mappings configured that make editing documents in "Vim-like" editors feel more painful because my muscle memory tries to use macros that aren't defined.
- andreyk 9y agoOne reason: Sharelatex has nice features for collaboration (such as editing suggestions, history, etc.).
- mturmon 9y agoThis is pretty much it. It can be a lift to get non-computer-savvy folks to use a highly-managed system like ShareLatex (which is a great system). But it would be impossible (not merely difficult) to do so if "just use git for collaboration" is your message! If a lot of your documents are collaborative, this turns out to be a major factor. (For my personal work, I'm happy to use Emacs and TeXshop and keep all files resident on my laptop.)
- mk321 9y agoWhy it is better than offline editor (like TeXnicCenter) and code repository (like Git)?
- andreyk 9y agoI've used both Overleaf and Sharelatex quite a bit, and think both products are great and have different strengths. It was frustrating to have to choose and have my Latex files split between the two, and this niche does not feel big enough to merit two competing great products, so I was pretty happy to hear about this.
- pfooti 9y agoI'm somewhat bummed about this - I am a big fan of ShareLaTeX, and have been using it for quite some time. I absolutely love that the whole thing is built on an open-source engine (not just the latex part - you can self-host if you want). Overleaf has a lot of also-interesting features, and probably a more robust revenue stream, but it's always a bit of a bummer when the open-source player in the market gets bought out by the closed-source one. Hopefully that last bit in the announcement remains true: "Both Overleaf and ShareLaTeX are committed to ensuring that all of the open ShareLaTeX code base will remain open source and will continue to be actively developed."
- jpallen 9y agoThanks for the kind words about ShareLaTeX! It's always great to hear that people have enjoyed it. The open source nature of ShareLaTeX isn't just about being good internet citizens, it's also been core to the ShareLaTeX business. As far as we can tell, it's only helped us to grow, from community goodwill, publicity, and onboarding for our onsite enterprise offering. We're very much bringing two thriving businesses together here, to get to where we want to get to quicker, without duplicating effort. And the open-source aspect is a strength that we plan to keep. - James, ShareLaTeX co-founder
- s_kilk 9y agoShareLaTeX dev here. We're very much committed to that statement, we wouldn't say it otherwise :)
- marricks 9y agoTime will tell, even if people have the best intentions a company doesn't usually buy out an competitor with an open source component to make it even better competition. The business interests of the original company have changed, and unless they plan to make that open source product a part of the larger company, that focus will need to change quite possibly for the personnel who were maintaining it. I guess this really hinges on how they merge Overleaf and ShareLaTex, but I find it hard to imagine they'll open up that whole merged thing to self hosting? Not trying to knock anyone, it's one of those times companies have every reason to say things will stay rosey and open because you don't want to offend your base, but no one can honestly promise that because priorities have and inevitably will change.
- mettamage 9y agoSharelatex changed my life in the world of LaTeX editors. With normal LaTeX I installed 10 GB of stuff, had no collaboration tools and no spellchecker, no good folder structure thing. It's those small GUI aspects that really made me appreciate ShareLaTeX.
- Tijdreiziger 9y agoMy MiKTeX installation is under 1 GB (MiKTeX pulls packages on-demand, so there aren't gigabytes of unused packages on your disk) and the excellent TeXstudio editor has a spell-checker enabled by default. ShareLaTeX is excellent for collaboration, but I much prefer a local setup when that's unnecessary.
- Cyph0n 9y agoI'm running the same setup. TeXstudio is absolutely fantastic.
- itsmenow 9y agoI personally much prefer using a local setup (editor+plugins+instantaneous compiling, etc), but of course collaboration is painful that way, especially given my collaborators much prefer web-based/shared work-flows. Just few days ago, however, discovered that I can use an overleaf project as just a git repo, then push/pull as I see fit. That is an amazing feature!... everyone get to work how they want. Hope that it stays included with the free version.
- Cyph0n 9y agoOh really? I used the web editor once but then switched to a local Git workflow. I'll look into Overleaf again then.
- paradite 9y agoYes. It's a feature "hidden" in the "share" button. I didn't know it first until my prof told me. I think overleaf should publicize this feature more prominently.
- jpallen 9y agoHey, James from ShareLaTeX here. We’re very excited about what this means for ShareLaTeX and Overleaf! The blog post says most of what we wanted to say, but all four founders from ShareLaTeX and Overleaf are around this evening (we’re in the UK) to answer questions if you have any. Give us a little while to reply though, since we’re all trying to have dinner too! :)
- leipert 9y agoI just did your survey, but forgot to mention a feature idea. I recently finished a typesetting a master thesis, which I converted with pandoc from docx to tex. Together with the Harvard Thesis template it was a bliss and took just ~6 hours to set the ~80 pages. Maybe a document converting feature (via pandoc!?) would help the merged product :) (And I would totally pay for that :D)
- hasch 9y agoCoCalc isn't so famous for latex editing, but it has a proper Linux terminal with pandoc. That allows you to automate some tasks, etc.
- jpallen 9y agoThanks for the suggestion! We have played around with pandoc as an option in the ShareLaTeX compiler, but we weren't able to get it working smoothly enough for us to be happy with it. But it's definitely on our radar.
- edwinksl 9y agoAre you all looking into allowing the use of the editor offline and then syncing the changes when the user gets online?
- jpallen 9y agoNot as a direct product offering from us, but we want to make sure it's always easy to get your work in and out of Overleaf/ShareLaTeX, and work offline, via things like git, GitHub and Dropbox.
- buildmystartup 9y agoI love ShareLatex. What is going to happen to existing customers?
- matthewmacleod 9y agoThat does seem to be rather explicitly spelled out in the post :)
- gnuvince 9y agoI hope that the documentation for ShareLaTeX stays online; of all the resources on LaTeX available, their documention stands above the rest in terms of clarity. The other day, I wanted to know how to do a proper quote, made a quick Google search, and I was happy that the first result was ShareLaTeX and I found the answer to my question.
- jpallen 9y agoYep, there's no way that we'd remove all of this! It's taken us a long time to build up that documentation, and it will continue to be maintained and updated.
- jermaink 9y agoI really hope that the ShareLaTeX UX will survive. If I had to use Overleaf's UI, I might seriously consider canceling the subscription. The dark theme is nothing you want to use on a daily basis. Otherwise, ShareLaTeX also worked much faster and had way better example snippets, I think? I'm optimistic that you do the transition, with Open Source.
- pitaa 9y agoI'm pretty excited for this. Overleaf is awesome! I've used it for a few years and have over 50 projects on my dashboard, but I checked out sharelatex a few months ago and was pretty impressed by some of their features. I didn't feel like switching because I feel a bit invested in overleaf with the number of projects, so I didn't investigate further. I hope that this can merge the best features of both programs and make latex more accessible than ever. Side question for the overleaf team: do you have any plans to make overleaf truly ios compatible? Yes, I know I can open it in the browser just fine (and kudos for that!), but when it takes 3 taps for every backslash or brace I need, it really doesn't work to do much more than minor modifications to existing documents. There really needs to be an easier way of typing the punctuation needed.
- JohnHammersley 9y agoHi Pitaa -- thanks for this, great to hear you've been a regular Overleaf user and have enjoyed it! :) On your side question: it's a tricky one, as although we do try to keep pace with the different browser updates to keep in the in-browser experience ok on ios, I agree it's not ideal. Long term we do want to do something better, but it's not an immediate priority (given that mobile use of Overleaf for editing is still relatively low, and we find that a lot of tablet users use separate keyboards). Hope that helps clarify, even if I don't have an immediate solution!
- drej 9y agoShareLaTeX is such a joy to use. I used to write a lot of LaTeX, but don't anymore, so don't even have it installed on my laptop. Whenever I need to typeset anything, I just pop it into their web interface, do some light editing and off I go. It's clean, fast, not clunky, it just does what it's supposed to. I wish you all the best, guys.
- nassyweazy 9y agoHuge fan of ShareLaTeX, looking forward to see the rest
- Craven 9y agoI've used both Overleaf and Sharelatex for my senior work and this move is worrying. I started with Overleaf but had to migrate over to Sharelatex due to the raw size of my file, which overleaf limits (at least in their free tier). Note that i'm not talking about data storage per user account, but a maximum document size. I hope the new platform adopts Sharelatex's file size limit.
- Netbeing 9y agoDAE keep finding their eye drawn to this headline because their brain sees it as a story about Shia LaBeouf? I mean, I don't really care about Shia LaBeouf, but I'm unfamiliar with ShareLaTeX and Overleaf so I keep pausing on this headline as I parse it.