
ShareLaTeX - ot
https://www.sharelatex.com/
======
beck5
Hi creator here, just got in from a few beers to see on HN which is amazing to
see! I've only been coding for about 20+ months or so and this has been my
evening/weekend project for the past few months, its a very new site, only out
for about 5 weeks now. There are still lots of things to improve but the
feedback has been amazing.

I am aiming for a fermium model at the moment, deep down I want to offer free
a service which helps people collaborate on important work. Ideally with
premium accounts subsidising a free but fully functional accounts. i.e. help
people work together first, make a living second.

few buzzwords for people: > MongoDB/mongolab, > 100% CoffeeScript, > Node.js,
> Now.js/socket.io, > Twitter bootstrap, stole css for menu bar from nide
<https://github.com/coreh/nide> > S3 > Linode > loggy.com

~~~
hdevalence2
Hey, this is really great (and a strange coincidence -- this afternoon I was
thinking about building something similar).

Something I'm wondering about: I currently use vim-latexsuite which has a
bunch of expansion features. For instance, if you type '^^' it expands to
'^{<++>}<++>', where the '<++>' are jump markers, and then 'jumps' into the
first marker. So if I wanted to type e.g., 'e^{-x/2}', the keystrokes I'd use
would be 'e ^ ^ - x / 2 CTRL-J'.

I'm not sure how you'd do the something similar, but the combination of jump
markers and user-defined expansions (e.g., I can define 'QQ' -> '\mathbb{Q}',
'fN' -> 'function', '`/' -> '\frac{<++>}{<++>}<++>' or even 'pmABCD' ->
'\begin{pmatrix} a & b \\\ c& d \end{pmatrix}' ) saves an enormous amount of
time writing TeX.

~~~
JadeNB
> I can define 'QQ' -> '\mathbb{Q}', 'fN' -> 'function', '`/' ->
> '\frac{<++>}{<++>}<++>' or even 'pmABCD' -> '\begin{pmatrix} a & b \\\ c& d
> \end{pmatrix}'

Out of curiosity, why do all these in your editor rather than in TeX? For
example, `\def\QQ{\mathbb Q}` would work just fine, and be only one more
keystroke. (The third example could be made into a parametrised macro, but
`\frac` is already such a macro, so I guess that you're really valuing the
keystrokes.)

~~~
hdevalence2
It sort of depends. For the blackboard bold, it's not really much difference
between doing it in the editor and doing it as TeX macros. I used to do them
in TeX, but after I started doing other things in the editor I switched them
for no particular reason outside of consistency. Also, expansions for words
like function, holomorphic, 'the following are equivalent', 'if and only if',
etc., are problematic to do as TeX macros, because of issues around spacing,
and because it's simply more readable.

For the others, it is really about the keystrokes -- one has to be able to
type really fast to keep up in a lecture or a talk, and then once you've
optimized for speed, why not type that quickly all the time?

------
hacman
If you were to offer an self-hosted version that I could install in my own
datacenter, that'd be of serious interest to me (my company). Allowing anyone
else to hosting the sort of documents that end up in latex (very sensitive
research papers) is simply not an option, but collaboration among researchers
would be very convenient on a platform like this if we could control it. Sure,
lots of latex is university or public research that ends up getting published
anyway, so security is not a concern. A lot of it, however, is industrial
research labs where information security is of paramount importance. This
seems to be an overlooked market among many people who just want to make web
programs. I urge you to consider the possibility that you have many potential
customers who are not interested in letting you host their data.

Very cool site, though. Google docs for latex is a very useful offering.
Thanks!

~~~
beck5
please get in contact hacman, i've not closed any doors yet. The code still
needs lot of polish and work but I am defiantly interested.

------
madiator
Just few days ago I was saying that I wish Google docs could handle latex. Now
this looks perfect! I will be sharing this with my advisor and other students
and see whether we can use it.

~~~
stonerri
LateX Lab was/is exactly that: <http://code.google.com/p/latex-lab/>

A demo is up and running at <http://docs.latexlab.org/>

* not affiliated with the project in anyway, just remember using it awhile back.

~~~
beck5
Latex lab development seemed to have stopped over a year ago before they
implemented real time collaberation, if it had continued I would have not have
started sharelatex.

------
xtacy
Does it have integration with Dropbox or some other file sharing service?
That, IMHO, would be a killer feature!

~~~
beck5
Unfortunately no, that brings in a world of Complexity which Im not planning
on dealing with. www.scribtex.com offers a git based interface for offline
work which may suit.

------
curiositydriven
I am a graduate student in a math-heavy field, so I thought you might be
interested in some feedback. Just yesterday, I was embedding LaTex-derived
images into an HTML email in order to collaborate, and I thought: this is just
so stupid. Your service definitely fills a need in the research community. I
love it. What is the envisioned freemium model? A problem I can see is that
very few users would need more than the service you are already offering.

~~~
beck5
That is a problem tbh. At the moment my number 1 objective isn't to make money
but we will see what the service costs me to run. Ideas for things for premium

\- unlimited private projects / free accounts only have public projects like
cloud9 \- multiple compilers \- unlimited collaborators per project \-
background compile looking for errors \- git pull access

any other ideas are welcome.

~~~
estevez
Sweave support? You could hand off to an EC2 instance and include _n_ hours of
computation time in tier _x_.

------
pbnjay
I'd really like to see a prominently linked privacy policy. Not that I'm
particularly concerned with you stealing my work-in-progress, but just as an
easy-to-see assurance that such things won't happen.

A really sweet potential feature request: dropbox integration. Then I could
work on my dissertation from anywhere, and always have a few extra backups.

~~~
starwed
I actually ended up writing my thesis using Eclipse with two plugins, one to
support latex and one to support git, and that worked surprisingly well.

~~~
beck5
Git is the best if you are working on LaTeX by yourself, I wrote my
dissertation last summer using it extensively. However writing LaTeX is
different from code for many reasons, for one if you write a new class in e.g.
c# all other classes do not care about the implementation, just what can the
put in and what do they get out. With LaTeX that doesn't work, you duplicate
yourself and get the narrative in the wrong order, they are very different
paradigms. I am planning on writing a blog post on this soon.

------
msutherl
Hey, just tried it out with the IEEEtran template and it didn't work:

[http://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/conferences/publishin...](http://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/conferences/publishing/templates.html)

I did upload the class file and the document points to it explicitly.

You can check out the errors here:
<https://www.sharelatex.com/project/4f2cc71be369403e73004116> (awesome that I
can do this!)

This is really great, I'm going to tell all of my academic
friends/collaborators about it. This is a _huge_ improvement over version
control (for non-geeks) or Dropbox sharing, not to mention email, which a
shocking number of people seem to still use.

~~~
beck5
I am still getting some styles ready on the site. It all got very popular a
bit to early for me!

------
gammarator
This could be very useful! One potential challenge is there may not be a huge
range of installed packages.

~~~
beck5
At the moment it is just a full installation of tex-live 2011 on ubuntu, if
something is missing just do some feedback and I will install it within a few
(waking) hours.

------
gulbrandr
_Please_ open the "Accept Terms and Conditions" link on another tab/window.
Thank you.

~~~
beck5
On the todo list, thanks.

------
zzleeper
Looks amazing. Compiles fast, supports packages, and the error logs are much
better than what I use.

That said, it would be nice to be able to download the files with one click,
sync with dropbox, and maybe have support for versions or diffs?

~~~
beck5
You can download the source files with maybe 2 clicks? (settings -> download
zip).

There is no version control at the moment. I am working on how to implement
this and diffs in a user friendly way soon. Basically git is not the answer
for collaborative LaTeX in my option, a different more dynamic and simpler way
is needed which I am working on.

~~~
JadeNB
> Basically git is not the answer for collaborative LaTeX in my option, a
> different more dynamic and simpler way is needed which I am working on.

This sounds very interesting. Could you elaborate at all, particularly on what
'more dynamic' means?

~~~
beck5
Well I only half know what that means as well, bit of a buz word. I basically
mean you need to see things happening in real time.

Stolen from another comment I made about writing latex:

"writing LaTeX is different from code for many reasons, for one if you write a
new class in e.g. c# all other classes do not care about the implementation,
just what can the put in and what do they get out. With LaTeX that doesn't
work, you duplicate yourself and get the narrative in the wrong order, they
are very different paradigms."

Basically other systems have this down, classically google docs and either
pad, but they are just for normal text. I would love to be able to have a
wrapped git blame on the site, one you can see in real time.

------
amirmansour
This is a legit startup idea. I can see my professors, research advisors, and
myself using this for sure. Collaborative research documentation is a great
idea. I hope others will see what I see, and use your service.

Awesome job BTW.

~~~
beck5
Thank you very much, this is quite surreal to see it on HN getting good
feedback!

------
jpluscplusm
Great concept and nice looking implementation, Henry! I'd not remembered to
check it out since you mentioned it in the pub the other (last?) week, but
I'll definitely kick the tyres over the weekend :-)

~~~
beck5
Ha ha, hello John! I have since left the land of ec2 and this is running
happily on a small linode instance, found it much faster for my monry. Yes my
db's are in a totally different datacenter to my server but I don' think the
site is that slow.

£10 says it goes down in the next 6 hours.

~~~
jpluscplusm
Hah! I don't think I'll take that bet :-)

I'm bored this w/e, so do get in touch and let me know if I can lend a hand
with some back-end systems tuning ... email, or via the phone number on
m'webshite (also on devwiki, under "contact numbers" IIRC)

~~~
beck5
Thank you, I am always happy to abuse a contact ;)

------
tnicola
Excellent. Now I no longer have to cart MikeTex Portable on my keychain. Since
I work on multiple computers with files from my DB, this will be great.
Thanks.

------
skystorm
Great idea and I like what I'm seeing so far. I assume it's based on pdflatex,
as opposed to latex + dvipdf / (dvips + ps2pdf) ?

FWIW, I just imported a document I'm working on to check things out. It gives
a bunch of warnings (underfull \hbox) but other than that works fine on my
system -- on your site, however, I can't get to the PDF, it keeps jumping to
the Logs screen with the warnings...

~~~
beck5
Yep its pdflatex, could you let me know which project that is so via the
feedback form so I can investigate?

------
ufuk
Why does the Terms and Conditions document
(<https://www.sharelatex.com/termsAndConditions.html>) refer to Automattic
Inc.? Is that a leftover from a quick copy and paste?

------
th
LaTeX Lab <[http://docs.latexlab.org/>](http://docs.latexlab.org/>); is
similar but Share LaTeX seems to have a much cleaner interface.

~~~
beck5
LaTeX lab is a direct copy of google documents. I am also incorrect with
www.scribtex.com who have another service. Scribex are going strong but
latexlab is not being worked on anymore. sharelatex is the only service which
offers the ability to work in real time which is the way I see latex
collaboration working.

------
Estragon
How hard is it to securely sandbox untrusted latex code?

~~~
beck5
this may be of interest, I've been chatting to the author today actually.
[https://db.usenix.org/events/leet10/tech/full_papers/Checkow...](https://db.usenix.org/events/leet10/tech/full_papers/Checkoway.pdf)

The site is secure but can always do better.

~~~
Estragon
Wow, that makes it sound hard to do.

~~~
beck5
Its not a given but it is doable, the main/basic line of defence is using a
chroot jail and having nothing in that root of any interest/value. When I get
chance I will do a blog post on it.

------
evoxed
Nice! I can't tell if your site is just HN bombed or my internet is choking
again (been going on alllll day).

Looking forward to giving it a spin!

~~~
beck5
yep just wen down for about 2 mins. Back up now. getting on HN was not planned
at all!

~~~
evoxed
Managed to load the homepage. I'll be digging through now, it looks great. Hot
damn it even catches errors! :)

------
ovechtrick
excellent, excellent, excellent. will absolutely be using this!

------
iz_mani
Hey ,this awesome job. Interface is simple and looks fine.

------
sio1
brilliant, been waiting for something like this.

