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We struggled with this, especially for collaborative projects, and it was one of the motivations for WritelaTeX (now Overleaf[1]). Having more eyes on the probl

We struggled with this, especially for collaborative projects, and it was one of the motivations for WritelaTeX (now Overleaf[1]). Having more eyes on the problem (on a shared doc), especially the ability to loop in LaTeX experts, usually resolved many of these similar types of issues. [1] https://www.overleaf.com https://www.overleaf.com Edit: for avoidance of doubt, I'm one of the founders of WriteLaTeX/Overleaf -- we've been providing LaTeX compilation-as-a-service for ~8 years now!

decasteve 6y ago
Glad to see the service still going strong. I seem to remember you being quite active back on Google+ during WriteLaTeX’s early days. I enjoyed following the progress.
- JohnHammersley 6y ago
  Yes, we were indeed pretty active on Google+, it seemed like the mathematics community took to it fairly early on, and we found it to be a useful place to be. How times have changed! If you'd still enjoy following us, we're pretty active on Twitter, and to a lesser degree on fb/linkedin.
abhgh 6y ago
Love your product/service, I am a paying customer (had been using the free version for a while; availability of full document history convinced me to convert). I have to often access a LaTeX document using multiple laptops, and overleaf is a massive improvement over my previous workflow of syncing source from GitHub for a local TeX editor.
- mahathu 6y ago
  I'm currently working on my thesis (alone) which I also sync between devices using github. I work on it locally in VSCode and wrote a small makefile to compile/clean up/etc. I get the appeal of overleaf for collaborating (I never used it myself, but it seems like a great platform!), but what is it that you consider a massive improvement in overleaf over git+local compiling?
  - azalemeth 6y ago
    I wrote my thesis with git + vim + latex. The main issue with collaborating like that is that you require other people to be able to use, say, git + vim + latex.† That may not be a problem for you and your colleagues. If it is however, Overleaf basically reduces it to "please open a web browser and have a look". The other major argument is, of course, that you get an off-site backup "for free" for something as life-changing as your doctoral thesis, too. †Of course, the other thing about having lots of local commits is that you can easily graph, say, words as quantified by texcount vs time and include the resulting diagram in the final copy of the document...
    - lorenzhs 6y ago
      You're answering a different question from the one that the GP asked. What's the advantage of using overleaf over git + $EDITOR for a document with one author? Regarding off-site backups, that is already provided by your git host (github/gitlab/...)
  - lorenzhs 6y ago
    > wrote a small makefile to compile/clean up/etc. you might like latexmk, which automates running the right tools in the right order. It's pretty neat. It detects whether to run bibtex or biber (and when) and whether another run of (pdf|lua|xe)latex is required to resolve references/citations/..., etc.
    - mahathu 6y ago
      You were right, I did like latexmk! Thank you so much, this will definitely make live easier for me in the future. I don't know why I didn't know about this sooner.
  - abhgh 6y ago
    Fundamentally, because of "reduction of steps" [1], although the workflows might be otherwise functionally equivalent: (1) The cognitive overload of the git push and pull - while this might have seemed small when I was using this workflow, I don't have these steps anymore making them seem unnecessary in retrospect. Reduced steps in general are better IMHO: same reason as to why I might use something like Google docs, even though, a somewhat equivalent workflow would involve going via GitHub. (2) Ensuring all local environments are similar or identical. Esp. a problem when installing new packages, say on device 1... when compiling on device 2, I need to either remember to do this by noting it somewhere (e.g. modifying the makefile), or I am reminded of it with a compilation failure. Small gains perhaps, but they add up. Esp. if you are working on multiple documents at the same time (I typically have 2-3 active documents). [1] If it matters, I need to switch between 3 devices running windows, ubuntu, elementary OS.
kyawzazaw 6y ago
As student, this site is invaluable.
- vermarish 6y ago
  Agreed. The way that Google Docs changed highschool English classes, Overleaf changed upper-division college mathematics classes.
aeturnum 6y ago
My masters project would likely not have been possible without overleaf (though I ended up compiling locally). Thank you for the product and good luck.
jkimmel 6y ago
Overleaf is one of my favorite tools. Thanks for building such a wonderful product!
enriquto 6y ago
> I'm one of the founders of WriteLaTeX/Overleaf -- we've been providing LaTeX compilation-as-a-service for ~8 years now! Great work! I depend on sharelatex/overleaf since a long time to collaborate with other people writing articles. It is especially great that your software is always available under the AGPL license. We use mostly the git interface, not the web editor. Do you know why it is so ridiculously slow to pull/push? Like, 20 or 30 seconds when it manages to work?
- gh2k 6y ago
  I'm a developer at Overleaf. If you have a lot of files or some large files it can slow things down a lot. The git server is something that's due for a revamp, but as it stands the best thing you can do for now is separate out your LaTeX content and other project assets into different repositories. (We usually see these kind of problems when people have a bunch of non-document stuff in their Overleaf project)
  - enriquto 6y ago
    > The git server is something that's due for a revamp, Thanks for the suggestion! Indeed the largest repos are the slowest to update, even when we only change a single character on a small text file. This behavior is surprising because it is not what happens in git proper, some other part of the system must be introducing the delay. I look forward to a normalization of overleaf's git interface, most notably the ability to have regular files, symbolic links and so on.
azalemeth 6y ago
My colleagues and I use Overleaf for writing journal articles -- it's a really great tool. Thank you so much for writing it. I just really wish I could get my university [Oxford] to pay for it! The bean counters don't have a problem paying Microsoft the amount of a small African nation's GDP per year, but I pay for my Overleaf pro account out of my own back pocket, and can't even claim it back on expenses...
- enriquto 6y ago
  > and can't even claim it back on expenses... This is ridiculous, how on earth a serious university have come to that?. If you need a laptop or an external disk you need to also buy it yourself?
  - azalemeth 6y ago
    As far as I can tell, in my department Overleaf isn't liked because it's (a) a personal service, (b) a subscription, and (c) from a company that they don't have in a labyrinthine Oracle-provided, horrific and IE5 "preferred" online purchasing system [which typically takes ~8 months to be added to]. Of these (b) is really the biggest bugbear because my research fellowship has a fixed budget for a fixed term and monthly subscriptions are basically anathema to the way that they do accounting. I have one piece of commercial FEM software that is only ever "licensed not sold" [annually] -- an annual license is ~£1k; a perpetual one ~£100k. It's quite clear that the company want to go in that direction. I hate it. I don't like subscriptions, and I get riled by central university finance departments every single time... Ironically, laptops and hard drives etc are quite easy to purchase: they count as 'consumables' and I have never worked in a department that actually audits their lifecycle properly -- much like lab reagents, once they're bought, the university [or my interactions with it at any rate] doesn't seem to even care if the first thing I do is throw it in a bin. This is a Good Thing™ as far as I'm concerned. Having decent computing wherever I am is absolutely key to getting my job done. Slightly more on topic, the other thing I would say is that quantitative departments are very good at teaching their students LaTeX, but not necessarily teaching them to it well. I won't exactly say that learning TeX made me a better physicist, but it definitely helped me communicate like a professional one. I interact a lot with doctors and bioscientists -- I basically work in medical imaging -- and trying to cross that divide is very hard; we forget that doing a physics degree gives you lots of transferable skills. Overleaf is excellent at providing a "user-friendly face" for projects that I can share with doctors -- they don't need to understand the code, nor have the distribution installed locally; they can just contribute to a paper in progress quite easily, and in particular it's "track changes" feature is something that they like. My team and I tend to use git and % comments, but the value of a web UI is definitely there. Debugging problems like alluded to in the original article is definitely easier locally, however.
0xTJ 6y ago
For personal projects I prefer running things directly on my computer, but I love Overleaf for collaborating. In the last year of my undergrad, there was a big switch in my year/discipline from using Word to LaTeX.

decasteve 6y ago

Glad to see the service still going strong. I seem to remember you being quite active back on Google+ during WriteLaTeX’s early days. I enjoyed following the progress.

JohnHammersley 6y ago
Yes, we were indeed pretty active on Google+, it seemed like the mathematics community took to it fairly early on, and we found it to be a useful place to be. How times have changed! If you'd still enjoy following us, we're pretty active on Twitter, and to a lesser degree on fb/linkedin.

abhgh 6y ago

Love your product/service, I am a paying customer (had been using the free version for a while; availability of full document history convinced me to convert). I have to often access a LaTeX document using multiple laptops, and overleaf is a massive improvement over my previous workflow of syncing source from GitHub for a local TeX editor.

mahathu 6y ago
I'm currently working on my thesis (alone) which I also sync between devices using github. I work on it locally in VSCode and wrote a small makefile to compile/clean up/etc. I get the appeal of overleaf for collaborating (I never used it myself, but it seems like a great platform!), but what is it that you consider a massive improvement in overleaf over git+local compiling?
- azalemeth 6y ago
  I wrote my thesis with git + vim + latex. The main issue with collaborating like that is that you require other people to be able to use, say, git + vim + latex.† That may not be a problem for you and your colleagues. If it is however, Overleaf basically reduces it to "please open a web browser and have a look". The other major argument is, of course, that you get an off-site backup "for free" for something as life-changing as your doctoral thesis, too. †Of course, the other thing about having lots of local commits is that you can easily graph, say, words as quantified by texcount vs time and include the resulting diagram in the final copy of the document...
  - lorenzhs 6y ago
    You're answering a different question from the one that the GP asked. What's the advantage of using overleaf over git + $EDITOR for a document with one author? Regarding off-site backups, that is already provided by your git host (github/gitlab/...)
- lorenzhs 6y ago
  > wrote a small makefile to compile/clean up/etc. you might like latexmk, which automates running the right tools in the right order. It's pretty neat. It detects whether to run bibtex or biber (and when) and whether another run of (pdf|lua|xe)latex is required to resolve references/citations/..., etc.
  - mahathu 6y ago
    You were right, I did like latexmk! Thank you so much, this will definitely make live easier for me in the future. I don't know why I didn't know about this sooner.
- abhgh 6y ago
  Fundamentally, because of "reduction of steps" [1], although the workflows might be otherwise functionally equivalent: (1) The cognitive overload of the git push and pull - while this might have seemed small when I was using this workflow, I don't have these steps anymore making them seem unnecessary in retrospect. Reduced steps in general are better IMHO: same reason as to why I might use something like Google docs, even though, a somewhat equivalent workflow would involve going via GitHub. (2) Ensuring all local environments are similar or identical. Esp. a problem when installing new packages, say on device 1... when compiling on device 2, I need to either remember to do this by noting it somewhere (e.g. modifying the makefile), or I am reminded of it with a compilation failure. Small gains perhaps, but they add up. Esp. if you are working on multiple documents at the same time (I typically have 2-3 active documents). [1] If it matters, I need to switch between 3 devices running windows, ubuntu, elementary OS.

kyawzazaw 6y ago

As student, this site is invaluable.

vermarish 6y ago
Agreed. The way that Google Docs changed highschool English classes, Overleaf changed upper-division college mathematics classes.

aeturnum 6y ago

My masters project would likely not have been possible without overleaf (though I ended up compiling locally). Thank you for the product and good luck.

jkimmel 6y ago

Overleaf is one of my favorite tools. Thanks for building such a wonderful product!

enriquto 6y ago

> I'm one of the founders of WriteLaTeX/Overleaf -- we've been providing LaTeX compilation-as-a-service for ~8 years now! Great work! I depend on sharelatex/overleaf since a long time to collaborate with other people writing articles. It is especially great that your software is always available under the AGPL license. We use mostly the git interface, not the web editor. Do you know why it is so ridiculously slow to pull/push? Like, 20 or 30 seconds when it manages to work?

gh2k 6y ago
I'm a developer at Overleaf. If you have a lot of files or some large files it can slow things down a lot. The git server is something that's due for a revamp, but as it stands the best thing you can do for now is separate out your LaTeX content and other project assets into different repositories. (We usually see these kind of problems when people have a bunch of non-document stuff in their Overleaf project)
- enriquto 6y ago
  > The git server is something that's due for a revamp, Thanks for the suggestion! Indeed the largest repos are the slowest to update, even when we only change a single character on a small text file. This behavior is surprising because it is not what happens in git proper, some other part of the system must be introducing the delay. I look forward to a normalization of overleaf's git interface, most notably the ability to have regular files, symbolic links and so on.

azalemeth 6y ago

My colleagues and I use Overleaf for writing journal articles -- it's a really great tool. Thank you so much for writing it. I just really wish I could get my university [Oxford] to pay for it! The bean counters don't have a problem paying Microsoft the amount of a small African nation's GDP per year, but I pay for my Overleaf pro account out of my own back pocket, and can't even claim it back on expenses...

enriquto 6y ago
> and can't even claim it back on expenses... This is ridiculous, how on earth a serious university have come to that?. If you need a laptop or an external disk you need to also buy it yourself?
- azalemeth 6y ago
  As far as I can tell, in my department Overleaf isn't liked because it's (a) a personal service, (b) a subscription, and (c) from a company that they don't have in a labyrinthine Oracle-provided, horrific and IE5 "preferred" online purchasing system [which typically takes ~8 months to be added to]. Of these (b) is really the biggest bugbear because my research fellowship has a fixed budget for a fixed term and monthly subscriptions are basically anathema to the way that they do accounting. I have one piece of commercial FEM software that is only ever "licensed not sold" [annually] -- an annual license is ~£1k; a perpetual one ~£100k. It's quite clear that the company want to go in that direction. I hate it. I don't like subscriptions, and I get riled by central university finance departments every single time... Ironically, laptops and hard drives etc are quite easy to purchase: they count as 'consumables' and I have never worked in a department that actually audits their lifecycle properly -- much like lab reagents, once they're bought, the university [or my interactions with it at any rate] doesn't seem to even care if the first thing I do is throw it in a bin. This is a Good Thing™ as far as I'm concerned. Having decent computing wherever I am is absolutely key to getting my job done. Slightly more on topic, the other thing I would say is that quantitative departments are very good at teaching their students LaTeX, but not necessarily teaching them to it well. I won't exactly say that learning TeX made me a better physicist, but it definitely helped me communicate like a professional one. I interact a lot with doctors and bioscientists -- I basically work in medical imaging -- and trying to cross that divide is very hard; we forget that doing a physics degree gives you lots of transferable skills. Overleaf is excellent at providing a "user-friendly face" for projects that I can share with doctors -- they don't need to understand the code, nor have the distribution installed locally; they can just contribute to a paper in progress quite easily, and in particular it's "track changes" feature is something that they like. My team and I tend to use git and % comments, but the value of a web UI is definitely there. Debugging problems like alluded to in the original article is definitely easier locally, however.

0xTJ 6y ago

For personal projects I prefer running things directly on my computer, but I love Overleaf for collaborating. In the last year of my undergrad, there was a big switch in my year/discipline from using Word to LaTeX.