4 ms·

I'm a big fan of LaTex, having used it for my thesis, presentation (beamer) and a few peer reviewed articles/jounals. With that disclaimer I can safely contend

I'm a big fan of LaTex, having used it for my thesis, presentation (beamer) and a few peer reviewed articles/jounals. With that disclaimer I can safely contend that Google/MSFT will not be interested in this. LaTex is for academic typesetting, with a special focus on math-y content. Even with WYSIWYG, every now and then one will need to get into the weeds of Tex syntax, which is simply not for the average computer user. As for academia, they will not pay a Google/Microsoft for LaTex use when they might as well use Lyx/Kile or their favorite editor with some syntax highlighting support for Tex. And unlike regular note taking, academic writing isn't so spontaneous that you start editing your IEEE manuscript on the pot, while on your phone. My guess is that the FAANG tribe have little incentive to commercialize this, and hence acquire it

Double_a_92 7y ago
It would be a way to get all the techy academics onto some platform such as Office365. Once they are there they might start using other (paid) things on there.
orhanhh 7y ago
Have you checked out Overleaf? I would say they are proof that there is definitely a market. My university (40k students, 8k employees) has a deal with them where all students and employees get access to premium features, and they probably pay a decent chunk of money for that. They have published a list of institutions using Overleaf here: https://www.overleaf.com/for/universities https://www.overleaf.com/for/universities
dsqrt 7y ago
Single academics will likely not bother with Office365/Google, but University administrators are the ones buying enterprise software. In the past few years the trend has been for the central administration to push departments to give up their self-hosted mail servers and switch to Office365 (I have witnessed this at three different Universities). My guess is that something like SwiftLatex could sweeten the deal and convince the faculty to support some of these changes.

Double_a_92 7y ago

It would be a way to get all the techy academics onto some platform such as Office365. Once they are there they might start using other (paid) things on there.

orhanhh 7y ago

Have you checked out Overleaf? I would say they are proof that there is definitely a market. My university (40k students, 8k employees) has a deal with them where all students and employees get access to premium features, and they probably pay a decent chunk of money for that. They have published a list of institutions using Overleaf here: https://www.overleaf.com/for/universities https://www.overleaf.com/for/universities

dsqrt 7y ago

Single academics will likely not bother with Office365/Google, but University administrators are the ones buying enterprise software. In the past few years the trend has been for the central administration to push departments to give up their self-hosted mail servers and switch to Office365 (I have witnessed this at three different Universities). My guess is that something like SwiftLatex could sweeten the deal and convince the faculty to support some of these changes.