5 ms·

What a great website -- CVs, presentations, snippets to copy... even books. What's the catch? Restrictive licensing? Because this seems too good to be true and

What a great website -- CVs, presentations, snippets to copy... even books. What's the catch? Restrictive licensing? Because this seems too good to be true and free. If this is all just a way to upsell people, I'm in awe. EDIT: And there's an RSS channel with new additions.

VelNZ 14y ago
No catch, I started the website as a free resource of LaTeX templates because one didn't exist and I intend to keep template downloads free. All current templates are licensed under creative commons. I do have a few plans for how I can capitalize on the website but templates will always be available for free download and I despise ad-ridden websites so that won't be happening either. If you have any ideas send me an email! It is getting more and more popular and I am making a little bit of money from it, but it is primarily for the masses. If you like the work please consider donating through Flattr, or better yet, take out an advertisement ;)
- sillysaurus 14y ago
  This editor is incredible. How did you make it? Can I see the un-minified source code somewhere? I want to learn how to make this.
  - niggler 14y ago
    From the about page, they are separate people: https://spandex.io/about https://spandex.io/about http://www.latextemplates.com/about http://www.latextemplates.com/about
    - sillysaurus 14y ago
      Nevertheless, I want to make this editor. How?
      - niggler 14y ago
        They are using the ace editor: http://ace.ajax.org/ http://ace.ajax.org/ There's some bootstrap and other jazz, and obviously a server-side component to perform the LaTeX rendering
        sillysaurus 14y ago
        Thanks! What are they using for the PDF viewer?
        niggler 14y ago
        pdf.js: https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js NOTE: If you do decide to build your own thing, I think it would be cool if you could run LaTeX in the browser directly (I guess you could do this by building pdflatex with emscripten)
        sillysaurus 14y ago
        Thank you. Do you know how they did the "intros" -- the dark overlay with popups that point out various buttons / explain concepts? Are they using intro.js, something else, or something they made themselves but haven't released yet? Also, could you provide more detail about what you mean by "run LaTeX in the browser directly"? It sounds like a fun challenge.
        niggler 14y ago
        Intros: https://github.com/jeff-optimizely/Guiders-JS https://github.com/jeff-optimizely/Guiders-JS "run LaTeX in the browser directly": Right now it appears to send data back to their servers to compile every time. What would be cool, especially for offline work, is a pure-JS implementation of the rendering engine.
        dbaupp 14y ago
        Your guess is 100% correct: http://manuels.github.com/texlive.js/website/ http://manuels.github.com/texlive.js/website/ (Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5083361 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5083361)
- vph 14y ago
  Good work!!! Are there black and white poster templates? Color printing of posters is expensive and not necessary in many cases.
  - niggler 14y ago
    Usually you can instruct your (color) printer to print in black and white, and it will print in various shades of grey. You can also do this in acrobat (print to Adobe PDF using black and white)
    - vph 14y ago
      Typically, people print large posters at places like FedEx Kinko. Converting color posters to B&W ones, although sound trivial conceptually, sometimes poses a practical challenge. One is you don't exactly know how the color posters will look in black and white.
- Bromskloss 14y ago
  Good-looking web site too! Unless forced to do otherwise, I always use the memoir document class and compile with xelatex. I've found that to be the best way to get access to fancy features. What about you, who do much more advanced stuff, is that something you use for your templates?
ambiate 14y ago
The catch is ads. All joking aside, does anyone else get an interesting sub-set of ads from this site? It seems Google is struggling to determine how to relate the model with relevant keywords. I see Ford(-$), GMC(-$), Cooking Show(-$), Education Program($$$), and Insurance ($$). I expected New Relic, Databases, Network Security, etc. Back on topic, great site. Also ranking well in Google! I've come across it a few times through search traffic and HN. While I have no interest in LaTeX, it is interesting to see the results. My TeX days ended when my DS and Algo classes both decided to use it for the bi-weekly homeworks. 60 minutes for homework, 9 hours in TeX.
- niggler 14y ago
  "60 minutes for homework, 9 hours in TeX." ... 20 hours using microsoft word and the equation editor. I'm surprised your classes didn't let you submit handwritten assignments.
- ams6110 14y ago
  The ads I used to see (before I started blocking) when I would search for LaTeX stuff were generally related to paint or rubber products... some NSFW.
- neutronicus 14y ago
  Yeah, I TeX'd homework for a semester once. It was nice that I could promptly lose it after turning it in, but it took way too much time.
- reeses 14y ago
  Normally, this would be 60 minutes for homework, five minutes in TeX, eight hours, fifty-five minutes trying to get that effing figure in the right place. Of course, it never helps that the 8:55 is usually after midnight. If your department required TeX, they should have had a template as well.

VelNZ 14y ago

No catch, I started the website as a free resource of LaTeX templates because one didn't exist and I intend to keep template downloads free. All current templates are licensed under creative commons. I do have a few plans for how I can capitalize on the website but templates will always be available for free download and I despise ad-ridden websites so that won't be happening either. If you have any ideas send me an email! It is getting more and more popular and I am making a little bit of money from it, but it is primarily for the masses. If you like the work please consider donating through Flattr, or better yet, take out an advertisement ;)

sillysaurus 14y ago
This editor is incredible. How did you make it? Can I see the un-minified source code somewhere? I want to learn how to make this.
- niggler 14y ago
  From the about page, they are separate people: https://spandex.io/about https://spandex.io/about http://www.latextemplates.com/about http://www.latextemplates.com/about
  - sillysaurus 14y ago
    Nevertheless, I want to make this editor. How?
    - niggler 14y ago
      They are using the ace editor: http://ace.ajax.org/ http://ace.ajax.org/ There's some bootstrap and other jazz, and obviously a server-side component to perform the LaTeX rendering
      - sillysaurus 14y ago
        Thanks! What are they using for the PDF viewer?
        niggler 14y ago
        pdf.js: https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js NOTE: If you do decide to build your own thing, I think it would be cool if you could run LaTeX in the browser directly (I guess you could do this by building pdflatex with emscripten)
        sillysaurus 14y ago
        Thank you. Do you know how they did the "intros" -- the dark overlay with popups that point out various buttons / explain concepts? Are they using intro.js, something else, or something they made themselves but haven't released yet? Also, could you provide more detail about what you mean by "run LaTeX in the browser directly"? It sounds like a fun challenge.
        niggler 14y ago
        Intros: https://github.com/jeff-optimizely/Guiders-JS https://github.com/jeff-optimizely/Guiders-JS "run LaTeX in the browser directly": Right now it appears to send data back to their servers to compile every time. What would be cool, especially for offline work, is a pure-JS implementation of the rendering engine.
        dbaupp 14y ago
        Your guess is 100% correct: http://manuels.github.com/texlive.js/website/ http://manuels.github.com/texlive.js/website/ (Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5083361 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5083361)
vph 14y ago
Good work!!! Are there black and white poster templates? Color printing of posters is expensive and not necessary in many cases.
- niggler 14y ago
  Usually you can instruct your (color) printer to print in black and white, and it will print in various shades of grey. You can also do this in acrobat (print to Adobe PDF using black and white)
  - vph 14y ago
    Typically, people print large posters at places like FedEx Kinko. Converting color posters to B&W ones, although sound trivial conceptually, sometimes poses a practical challenge. One is you don't exactly know how the color posters will look in black and white.
Bromskloss 14y ago
Good-looking web site too! Unless forced to do otherwise, I always use the memoir document class and compile with xelatex. I've found that to be the best way to get access to fancy features. What about you, who do much more advanced stuff, is that something you use for your templates?

ambiate 14y ago

The catch is ads. All joking aside, does anyone else get an interesting sub-set of ads from this site? It seems Google is struggling to determine how to relate the model with relevant keywords. I see Ford(-$), GMC(-$), Cooking Show(-$), Education Program($$$), and Insurance ($$). I expected New Relic, Databases, Network Security, etc. Back on topic, great site. Also ranking well in Google! I've come across it a few times through search traffic and HN. While I have no interest in LaTeX, it is interesting to see the results. My TeX days ended when my DS and Algo classes both decided to use it for the bi-weekly homeworks. 60 minutes for homework, 9 hours in TeX.

niggler 14y ago
"60 minutes for homework, 9 hours in TeX." ... 20 hours using microsoft word and the equation editor. I'm surprised your classes didn't let you submit handwritten assignments.
ams6110 14y ago
The ads I used to see (before I started blocking) when I would search for LaTeX stuff were generally related to paint or rubber products... some NSFW.
neutronicus 14y ago
Yeah, I TeX'd homework for a semester once. It was nice that I could promptly lose it after turning it in, but it took way too much time.
reeses 14y ago
Normally, this would be 60 minutes for homework, five minutes in TeX, eight hours, fifty-five minutes trying to get that effing figure in the right place. Of course, it never helps that the 8:55 is usually after midnight. If your department required TeX, they should have had a template as well.