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That's just really nice. I used LaTeX for two theses and loved it. It was very freeing to just worry about content and not about layout. When I use Word, I c

That's just really nice. I used LaTeX for two theses and loved it. It was very freeing to just worry about content and not about layout. When I use Word, I constantly fiddle with styling and with Word's occasional bizarre behavior (delete a word and the next paragraph becomes bold... ?!). With LaTeX, I spent an hour up front defining styles and a few minutes toward the end adjusting styles, but otherwise just wrote content (in vim!). I don't think I really ever ran into "OMFG, what is it doing?!" situations. Okay, so the perfect scenario goes: ScribTex does well; ScribTex gets bought by Google; Google Docs adds Tex documents!

boundlessdreamz 16y ago
Google docs has a latex based equation editor http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-docs-has-equation-editor.html http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-docs-has-equ...
- deleted 16y ago
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- CoffeeDregs 16y ago
  Sweet! Now they just need a LaTex-based doc editor... ;)
alsocasey 16y ago
Wholeheartedly agree. Who doesn't like LaTeX? This makes it better because it saves me having to install a local copy of one of the absolutely humongous LaTeX packages (MacTeX was 1.6GB last time I looked), which, on my small SSD, is considerable. Also, I can now pump out LaTeX-perfect copy when I'm stuck using a dronebox with nothing but MSWord installed.
eddieplan9 16y ago
As excited about LaTeX in general as the next guy, I think this project has room for improvement until it's ready for prime time. As a webapp, it has its intrinsic advantage of zero-installation, ubiquitous availability, mobility, etc. However, it also inherits many problems and needs to compete with some really really nice native and free apps, such as TeXShop. It would need to include well-received features available in TeXShop and others, and add some extra values beyond the webapp advantages. 1. Targeting real LaTeX users, I think it makes sense to add some shortcut key or autocompletion for common commands. 2. Make it easy to go back and forth between source and preview PDF. It would be very helpful if it could highlight in the rendering result the text selected in the source view (or just the cursor position). It would even be better if you could scroll to the highlighted spot [see http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/317/317300.html http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/317/317300.html] 3. Make it sync with Dropbox and/or Google Docs. Most of the target audience is already using one or both. I prefer Dropbox. If I can still use native app such as TeXShop when it is available and move to ScribTeX when I am somewhere else and still moving back without thinking, I am sold. 4. I am not sure about others, but I'd like to see the prolog (like \documentclass) and epilog (\end{document}) and other boilerplate code auto-generated and configurable from a simple panel and then hided nicely. Using different amount of padding to show the structure of the document (such as show \subsubsection with more padding then \subsection) would also be a very nice feature.

boundlessdreamz 16y ago

Google docs has a latex based equation editor http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-docs-has-equation-editor.html http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-docs-has-equ...

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
CoffeeDregs 16y ago
Sweet! Now they just need a LaTex-based doc editor... ;)

alsocasey 16y ago

Wholeheartedly agree. Who doesn't like LaTeX? This makes it better because it saves me having to install a local copy of one of the absolutely humongous LaTeX packages (MacTeX was 1.6GB last time I looked), which, on my small SSD, is considerable. Also, I can now pump out LaTeX-perfect copy when I'm stuck using a dronebox with nothing but MSWord installed.

eddieplan9 16y ago

As excited about LaTeX in general as the next guy, I think this project has room for improvement until it's ready for prime time. As a webapp, it has its intrinsic advantage of zero-installation, ubiquitous availability, mobility, etc. However, it also inherits many problems and needs to compete with some really really nice native and free apps, such as TeXShop. It would need to include well-received features available in TeXShop and others, and add some extra values beyond the webapp advantages. 1. Targeting real LaTeX users, I think it makes sense to add some shortcut key or autocompletion for common commands. 2. Make it easy to go back and forth between source and preview PDF. It would be very helpful if it could highlight in the rendering result the text selected in the source view (or just the cursor position). It would even be better if you could scroll to the highlighted spot [see http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/317/317300.html http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/317/317300.html] 3. Make it sync with Dropbox and/or Google Docs. Most of the target audience is already using one or both. I prefer Dropbox. If I can still use native app such as TeXShop when it is available and move to ScribTeX when I am somewhere else and still moving back without thinking, I am sold. 4. I am not sure about others, but I'd like to see the prolog (like \documentclass) and epilog (\end{document}) and other boilerplate code auto-generated and configurable from a simple panel and then hided nicely. Using different amount of padding to show the structure of the document (such as show \subsubsection with more padding then \subsection) would also be a very nice feature.