7 ms·

Online LaTex editor

108 points by dn2k 13y ago

jessriedel 13y ago
People in this thread might also be interested in the following. GmailTeX allows you to see LaTeX in your Gmail and GChat. Works in real-time, but browser plug-in required. http://alexeev.org/gmailtex.html http://alexeev.org/gmailtex.html Socrates is a website for writing instant Markdown and LaTeXing in the browser. It's hyperlink-shareable, no plugin required. http://socrates.io/ http://socrates.io/
- jbackus 13y ago
  I want to love socrates.io but the fact that it doesn't support Markdown tables is an issue: Socrates.IO Table: http://socrates.io/#YtM088D http://socrates.io/#YtM088D Working Example: http://bit.ly/JbtMarkdownTable http://bit.ly/JbtMarkdownTable
siddhartpai 13y ago
There is another site called http://www.writelatex.com http://www.writelatex.com
networked 13y ago
This is a new product from the people who made ScribTeX (http://www.scribtex.com/ http://www.scribtex.com/). ScribTeX helped me a lot a few years back when I had a conference paper due in a couple of days and only an old PowerPC machine at my disposal at home that had trouble running MacTeX (for reasons I had no time to fix). I ended up writing most of it in the browser. Then the killer feature of ScribTeX for me was that it didn't require registration; you could use it from anywhere right away if you had your TeX files with you on a flash drive. It wasn't that registering or logging in was hard, mind you, but not having to do it completely bypassed the mental barrier of entering your password in a potentially unsafe environment like a malware-infested university computer lab. Later you would be at a safer computer (e.g., your own), log in to ScribTeX and upload your document to it as an off-site backup.
po 13y ago
I looked into using LaTeX in an online service once but my understanding was that LaTeX is difficult to serve as a service because there are several commands which allow arbitrary code execution. Is this whitelisting some of the syntax? How are they doing that? (btw, if it turns out they aren't please don't comment here about it but instead report it to them at https://www.sharelatex.com/security https://www.sharelatex.com/security )
- emillon 13y ago
  It's always possible to sandbox the processes. In that sense, it's not very different from the various http://try.$PROGRAMMINGLANGUAGE.org http://try.$PROGRAMMINGLANGUAGE.org. For most of the sandboxing techniques, the performance can be however problematic. What's peculiar about latex is that its compilation model is ridiculously inefficient. There's no separate compilation, so you have to re-run the whole compilation at the tiniest change. Also, there's a lot of I/O involved, and a several passes are needed. For example, to display the table of contents, it is necessary to append to a temporary file a list of commands (emitted by \section{} etc) which will be interpreted, in a following pass (it is necessary to manually re-run the compiler) by \tableofcontents.
  - denzil_correa 13y ago
    > What's peculiar about latex is that its compilation model is ridiculously inefficient. There's no separate compilation, so you have to re-run the whole compilation at the tiniest change. Is there a scope for LaTex to have "delta compilation"? This is particularly required if you make presentations using LaTex (Beamer). The whole recompilation process is pretty painful once the number of slides (which includes transitions) go past ~20. Currently, there are some "workarounds" for it, but it would be nice if such a feature exists.
    - edelans 13y ago
      I use https://www.writelatex.com/ https://www.writelatex.com/ where I have a 17 pages (pdf) of math exercices, and I don't know how they deal with it, but apparently they manage to make incremental "recompilation process", because when I make an online modification on the Latex code, the modification appears almost anstantaneously on the preview pdf aside the code !
rob22 13y ago
It is a good editor.you can create you own resume through the sharelatex....
lutusp 13y ago
Since we're on the subject, here's my online LaTex editor: http://arachnoid.com/latex/ http://arachnoid.com/latex/
- userulluipeste 13y ago
  You should promote more this solution of yours. Big thumb up!
  - lutusp 13y ago
    Thanks!
- nnnnni 13y ago
  \immediate and \write18 are disabled. Good.
  - dbaupp 13y ago
    It looks like a purely javascript* solution that only renders math-mode anyway, so it would be extremely surprising if there was even the possibility to enable them. *With the possibility of "shelling out" to 2 external services.
    - lutusp 13y ago
      > It looks like a purely javascript* solution Yes, that's what it is. I wanted to maximize its usefulness while minimizing the risks.
aortega 13y ago
I'm surely getting old, but I believe online editing of text documents is insane. I would forget about writing anything slightly more important than a pie recipe with this.
- RamiK 13y ago
  I'm not sure about "insane". Over the years I personally moved from a dedicated TeX workstation towards using a Wheezy stable qemu virtual machine with TeX Live and Texmaker. From there, a server-side online compiler isn't really too far off.
- VikingCoder 13y ago
  Why insane? I mean, you're welcome to your opinion, but you haven't presented any arguments for your position. I find it incredibly useful. The alternative is normally using Microsoft Word, and emailing each other versions of the document, that need to be merged by hand.
  - aortega 13y ago
    I'm worried about privacy. Even scientific papers need to have reasonable privacy before publication, that you do not have by using somebody else's hosting. More useful would be using latex and some form of source-control like git or svn hosted by you or your organization.
    - VikingCoder 13y ago
      The odds that you or your organization will do a better job of Dev Ops than Google are effectively zero. You'll leave some port open that you shouldn't, have an easily guessed password on a router, forget to update a kernel, you won't set up two-factor authentication...
alpeb 13y ago
I swear by StackEdit one, which is an online editor for markdown supporting LaTex math expressions: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stackedit/iiooodelglhkcpgbajoejffhijaclcdg https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stackedit/iiooodel...
swah 13y ago
My experience is that LaTex is too hard/strange for most people (even electrical engineers, so its not about IQ...), and there isn't a better alternative to MS Word for writing big product manuals. (Also, while having some experience with the system, I do notice that I have a hard time achieving flow while writing LaTex. There are hundreds of WTFs).
- tlarkworthy 13y ago
  Try LyX. Nothing comes close to math in latex
  - X4 13y ago
    Seriously, you will regret not using TexStudio, I guided a friend who installed it on Windows (works on Mac,Linux too) and damnit, it can transform drawings of formulas or anything to LaTeX-Code. That's awesome!
    - tlarkworthy 13y ago
      TexStudio, no thanks, it has no WYSIWYM editor, I can't format tables like that.
      - X4 13y ago
        It has a table-assistant, a matrix assistant etc., but you decide.
- klancaster1957 13y ago
  I've started doing my academic writing in MultiMarkdown (MMD) using Scrivener. It generates LaTex (or PDFs via LaTex) and for me is even easier than Lyx. When needed, you just embed raw LaTex in the doc as <!--xxx-> comments or just do the final polishing in your usual LaTex editor.
  - swah 13y ago
    I almost forced the team to choose Markdown, and then had to change my advice and say "Let's go with LaTex" because there are so many features MS Word users want to use... I don't remember exactly the one that prompted the switch - maybe footnotes, tables or referencing.
mkohlmyr 13y ago
Used sharelatex for my third year project report at university. ~60 pages rendered quickly and flawlessly. Such a great experience using it compared to various desktop software and command line
benjamta 13y ago
We use LaTeX a lot for all kinds of documentation. I've used sharelatex.com on and off for a while now. I think they'll be onto a winner when they've got their up coming Git access feature sorted out.
glesica 13y ago
There's something vaguely "scammy" to be about the university logos being featured so prominently on the front page. My first thought was that it was being developed by a consortium of schools, but apparently it is considered good enough if one or more students at the institution use the product...
- beck5 13y ago
  co-founder here. We do require that the university is paying for a licence before we show their logo. Also most of the time we get asked to add their logos there.
leoedin 13y ago
I used Scribtex (a previous product developed by at least some of the people behind sharelatex) for 2 years during university with a lot of success. Compared to setting up a latex environment on every PC I used it was a dream. I found the developer quick to respond to bug reports and issues. Recommended!
mjcohen 13y ago
Going the other way, if you want to enter the LaTeX variant called MathJax locally (PC and Mac), which is used on math.stackexchange.com (among other other places), try http://www.inkcode.net/qute http://www.inkcode.net/qute. I find this very handy for short to moderate length math. In my weirdness, I like to use qute in split-screen mode, and work out the math as I enter it, never writing anything down. I then make corrections, modify things, move lines around, all in qute. I have developed some techniques for having correct MathJax syntax at almost all times, which I find necessary since qute does not show the result of an incorrect expression. I find qute very useful for formatting math. Since it is all offline, no connection is needed. After the formatting is correct, I can then push it to the clipboard and paste it into whatever I want (usually math.stackexchange.com). I recommend qute highly. Again, it is for Windows and Mac OS, not Linux (unfortunately).
- X4 13y ago
  @mjcohen weird, I use qute on Linux (Gentoo), there's even an ebuild for it. However it's not hard to built it yourself on linux, actually dead easy. I also use pandoc writing Markdown and compiling to latex → pdf
tzury 13y ago
The templates section is nevertheless useful https://www.sharelatex.com/templates/ https://www.sharelatex.com/templates/
X4 13y ago
How you can speedup LaTeX compilation speeds by a factor of 2x or 3x. %&Thesis -jobname="Thesis" % ^^This needs to be the 1st line of your Thesis.tex^^ %% Enable Binary Preamble Cache %% Doc: http://www.ctan.org/pkg/mylatexformat http://www.ctan.org/pkg/mylatexformat %% Usage: pdflatex -ini -synctex=1 -shell-escape -jobname="Thesis" "&pdflatex" mylatexformat.ltx Thesis.tex \csname endofdump\endcsname What follows here is the part that changes, ie. your chapters. All preceding "endofdump" will be compiled into a cache file.

108 points by dn2k 13y ago

People in this thread might also be interested in the following. GmailTeX allows you to see LaTeX in your Gmail and GChat. Works in real-time, but browser plug-in required. http://alexeev.org/gmailtex.html http://alexeev.org/gmailtex.html Socrates is a website for writing instant Markdown and LaTeXing in the browser. It's hyperlink-shareable, no plugin required. http://socrates.io/ http://socrates.io/

jbackus 13y ago
I want to love socrates.io but the fact that it doesn't support Markdown tables is an issue: Socrates.IO Table: http://socrates.io/#YtM088D http://socrates.io/#YtM088D Working Example: http://bit.ly/JbtMarkdownTable http://bit.ly/JbtMarkdownTable

siddhartpai 13y ago

There is another site called http://www.writelatex.com http://www.writelatex.com

networked 13y ago

This is a new product from the people who made ScribTeX (http://www.scribtex.com/ http://www.scribtex.com/). ScribTeX helped me a lot a few years back when I had a conference paper due in a couple of days and only an old PowerPC machine at my disposal at home that had trouble running MacTeX (for reasons I had no time to fix). I ended up writing most of it in the browser. Then the killer feature of ScribTeX for me was that it didn't require registration; you could use it from anywhere right away if you had your TeX files with you on a flash drive. It wasn't that registering or logging in was hard, mind you, but not having to do it completely bypassed the mental barrier of entering your password in a potentially unsafe environment like a malware-infested university computer lab. Later you would be at a safer computer (e.g., your own), log in to ScribTeX and upload your document to it as an off-site backup.

po 13y ago

I looked into using LaTeX in an online service once but my understanding was that LaTeX is difficult to serve as a service because there are several commands which allow arbitrary code execution. Is this whitelisting some of the syntax? How are they doing that? (btw, if it turns out they aren't please don't comment here about it but instead report it to them at https://www.sharelatex.com/security https://www.sharelatex.com/security )

emillon 13y ago
It's always possible to sandbox the processes. In that sense, it's not very different from the various http://try.$PROGRAMMINGLANGUAGE.org http://try.$PROGRAMMINGLANGUAGE.org. For most of the sandboxing techniques, the performance can be however problematic. What's peculiar about latex is that its compilation model is ridiculously inefficient. There's no separate compilation, so you have to re-run the whole compilation at the tiniest change. Also, there's a lot of I/O involved, and a several passes are needed. For example, to display the table of contents, it is necessary to append to a temporary file a list of commands (emitted by \section{} etc) which will be interpreted, in a following pass (it is necessary to manually re-run the compiler) by \tableofcontents.
- denzil_correa 13y ago
  > What's peculiar about latex is that its compilation model is ridiculously inefficient. There's no separate compilation, so you have to re-run the whole compilation at the tiniest change. Is there a scope for LaTex to have "delta compilation"? This is particularly required if you make presentations using LaTex (Beamer). The whole recompilation process is pretty painful once the number of slides (which includes transitions) go past ~20. Currently, there are some "workarounds" for it, but it would be nice if such a feature exists.
  - edelans 13y ago
    I use https://www.writelatex.com/ https://www.writelatex.com/ where I have a 17 pages (pdf) of math exercices, and I don't know how they deal with it, but apparently they manage to make incremental "recompilation process", because when I make an online modification on the Latex code, the modification appears almost anstantaneously on the preview pdf aside the code !

rob22 13y ago

It is a good editor.you can create you own resume through the sharelatex....

lutusp 13y ago

Since we're on the subject, here's my online LaTex editor: http://arachnoid.com/latex/ http://arachnoid.com/latex/

userulluipeste 13y ago
You should promote more this solution of yours. Big thumb up!
- lutusp 13y ago
  Thanks!
nnnnni 13y ago
\immediate and \write18 are disabled. Good.
- dbaupp 13y ago
  It looks like a purely javascript* solution that only renders math-mode anyway, so it would be extremely surprising if there was even the possibility to enable them. *With the possibility of "shelling out" to 2 external services.
  - lutusp 13y ago
    > It looks like a purely javascript* solution Yes, that's what it is. I wanted to maximize its usefulness while minimizing the risks.

aortega 13y ago

I'm surely getting old, but I believe online editing of text documents is insane. I would forget about writing anything slightly more important than a pie recipe with this.

RamiK 13y ago
I'm not sure about "insane". Over the years I personally moved from a dedicated TeX workstation towards using a Wheezy stable qemu virtual machine with TeX Live and Texmaker. From there, a server-side online compiler isn't really too far off.
VikingCoder 13y ago
Why insane? I mean, you're welcome to your opinion, but you haven't presented any arguments for your position. I find it incredibly useful. The alternative is normally using Microsoft Word, and emailing each other versions of the document, that need to be merged by hand.
- aortega 13y ago
  I'm worried about privacy. Even scientific papers need to have reasonable privacy before publication, that you do not have by using somebody else's hosting. More useful would be using latex and some form of source-control like git or svn hosted by you or your organization.
  - VikingCoder 13y ago
    The odds that you or your organization will do a better job of Dev Ops than Google are effectively zero. You'll leave some port open that you shouldn't, have an easily guessed password on a router, forget to update a kernel, you won't set up two-factor authentication...

alpeb 13y ago

I swear by StackEdit one, which is an online editor for markdown supporting LaTex math expressions: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stackedit/iiooodelglhkcpgbajoejffhijaclcdg https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stackedit/iiooodel...

swah 13y ago

My experience is that LaTex is too hard/strange for most people (even electrical engineers, so its not about IQ...), and there isn't a better alternative to MS Word for writing big product manuals. (Also, while having some experience with the system, I do notice that I have a hard time achieving flow while writing LaTex. There are hundreds of WTFs).

tlarkworthy 13y ago
Try LyX. Nothing comes close to math in latex
- X4 13y ago
  Seriously, you will regret not using TexStudio, I guided a friend who installed it on Windows (works on Mac,Linux too) and damnit, it can transform drawings of formulas or anything to LaTeX-Code. That's awesome!
  - tlarkworthy 13y ago
    TexStudio, no thanks, it has no WYSIWYM editor, I can't format tables like that.
    - X4 13y ago
      It has a table-assistant, a matrix assistant etc., but you decide.
klancaster1957 13y ago
I've started doing my academic writing in MultiMarkdown (MMD) using Scrivener. It generates LaTex (or PDFs via LaTex) and for me is even easier than Lyx. When needed, you just embed raw LaTex in the doc as <!--xxx-> comments or just do the final polishing in your usual LaTex editor.
- swah 13y ago
  I almost forced the team to choose Markdown, and then had to change my advice and say "Let's go with LaTex" because there are so many features MS Word users want to use... I don't remember exactly the one that prompted the switch - maybe footnotes, tables or referencing.

mkohlmyr 13y ago

Used sharelatex for my third year project report at university. ~60 pages rendered quickly and flawlessly. Such a great experience using it compared to various desktop software and command line

benjamta 13y ago

We use LaTeX a lot for all kinds of documentation. I've used sharelatex.com on and off for a while now. I think they'll be onto a winner when they've got their up coming Git access feature sorted out.

glesica 13y ago

There's something vaguely "scammy" to be about the university logos being featured so prominently on the front page. My first thought was that it was being developed by a consortium of schools, but apparently it is considered good enough if one or more students at the institution use the product...

beck5 13y ago
co-founder here. We do require that the university is paying for a licence before we show their logo. Also most of the time we get asked to add their logos there.

leoedin 13y ago

I used Scribtex (a previous product developed by at least some of the people behind sharelatex) for 2 years during university with a lot of success. Compared to setting up a latex environment on every PC I used it was a dream. I found the developer quick to respond to bug reports and issues. Recommended!

mjcohen 13y ago

Going the other way, if you want to enter the LaTeX variant called MathJax locally (PC and Mac), which is used on math.stackexchange.com (among other other places), try http://www.inkcode.net/qute http://www.inkcode.net/qute. I find this very handy for short to moderate length math. In my weirdness, I like to use qute in split-screen mode, and work out the math as I enter it, never writing anything down. I then make corrections, modify things, move lines around, all in qute. I have developed some techniques for having correct MathJax syntax at almost all times, which I find necessary since qute does not show the result of an incorrect expression. I find qute very useful for formatting math. Since it is all offline, no connection is needed. After the formatting is correct, I can then push it to the clipboard and paste it into whatever I want (usually math.stackexchange.com). I recommend qute highly. Again, it is for Windows and Mac OS, not Linux (unfortunately).

X4 13y ago
@mjcohen weird, I use qute on Linux (Gentoo), there's even an ebuild for it. However it's not hard to built it yourself on linux, actually dead easy. I also use pandoc writing Markdown and compiling to latex → pdf

tzury 13y ago

The templates section is nevertheless useful https://www.sharelatex.com/templates/ https://www.sharelatex.com/templates/

X4 13y ago

How you can speedup LaTeX compilation speeds by a factor of 2x or 3x. %&Thesis -jobname="Thesis" % ^^This needs to be the 1st line of your Thesis.tex^^ %% Enable Binary Preamble Cache %% Doc: http://www.ctan.org/pkg/mylatexformat http://www.ctan.org/pkg/mylatexformat %% Usage: pdflatex -ini -synctex=1 -shell-escape -jobname="Thesis" "&pdflatex" mylatexformat.ltx Thesis.tex \csname endofdump\endcsname What follows here is the part that changes, ie. your chapters. All preceding "endofdump" will be compiled into a cache file.