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Show HN: We've open-sourced our bootstrapped startup, ShareLaTeX

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Re: Show HN: We've open-sourced our bootstrapped startup, ShareLaTeX

#71

Post by RA_Fisher »

anonymouz wrote: post #62
RA_Fisher wrote: post #49

My wife started out with www.writelatex.com to write her dissertation. The auto-compilation really slows down once you get beyond 30 or so pages. Also they don't have Git integration either, which was a deal breaker for my wife. She's since moved to using RStudio locally + Git. She says, "If you have Git integration, the auto-compilation feature would get me back from RStudio." We've also thought about using Grunt to…

Check out latexmk. With it's -pvc option it has continuous preview (=auto-compilation).

Thanks!

Re: Show HN: We've open-sourced our bootstrapped startup, ShareLaTeX

#72

Post by greglindahl »

kriro wrote: post #22

This looks excellent. I'll certainly try it for my next paper and will see if I can lobby our university to pay for the hosted version. I'm assuming universities are what you are aiming for? I think you should focus on CSy departments. Could also target conferences/journals i.e. allow them to offer access to the hosted version for people collaborating on a paper for that journal/conference. From a business developmen…

Historically, TeX and LaTeX have had their best penetration in Math, Physics, and Astronomy departments. Many journals in these fields only accept papers in TeX, and have their own templates.

Re: Show HN: We've open-sourced our bootstrapped startup, ShareLaTeX

#73

Post by pseut »

beck5 wrote: post #70
pseut wrote: post #61

Just tested this out with a 150 page document split across several folders; it compiled quickly and I really like the way you display the logs and warnings. Looks great! And I really appreciate your making it opensource. Integrating this with github a la travis-ci would be great, obviously one would need to be able to make commits to the repository too; I'm not sure if it would be great enough that it would induce pe…

we have spent a lot of time working on our compiler, it is good fast! We currently have a internal jenkins ci server, we should make the build status available some how. Although we are militant that builds are always green. The zip sounds unusual, it should work.... The drag and drop stuff is not great, we really need another person to join the team and spend some time on our front end (plug, remote welcome).

Oh, I meant that I want to link a github repo containing latex for a paper to sharelatex; I.e. You'd be Travis-ci for latex repos.

Re: Show HN: We've open-sourced our bootstrapped startup, ShareLaTeX

#74

Post by xanth »

I have been meaning to use LayTeX for my assessment and now that my second year of university is rapidly approaching this product looks perfect. I would love to use this but github intergeneration is a must for collaboration. What is the time frame for git integration?

Re: Show HN: We've open-sourced our bootstrapped startup, ShareLaTeX

#75

Post by einhverfr »

jpallen wrote: post #48
einhverfr wrote: post #46

It's really great to see perpetual interest in collaboration on LaTeX documents. I hope you have great success (not sure I have a use for it now but will keep you in mind if I ever do). I also expect to recommend it. Unfortunately a lot of my own documents are really hard to handle with editors -- I tend to write very long documents split across multiple source documents in a tree for easy management. I wonder if the…

You can split your document into multiple files on ShareLaTeX too, just like you could on your own computer with LaTeX. There is still a lot that we'd like to add into our IDE, but providing an experience that compares with offline editing is an important priority for us.

That's very good news, indeed. Definitely will be using this on my next major LaTeX document project.

Re: Show HN: We've open-sourced our bootstrapped startup, ShareLaTeX

#76

Post by alxndr »

hootener wrote: post #64
grittathh wrote: post #60

Thank you for open-sourcing this! At the moment I'm using sharelatex to keep a version of all my equations "alive" since every time someone tries to resave my word documents, the equations become rendered to images. Unfortunately for me, Latex hasn't gained traction in our department. I think the main barriers to entry, for our lab at least, are: 1) Local installation is more difficult than installing Word. Sharelate…

> Word's comment and review tracking system is more intuitive. This. The first person that makes a LaTeX comment and track changes system as intuitive as Word's can have all my money. No, the comment and todo LaTeX packages don't count. There's just too much resistance in getting someone to go through the LaTeX install process just to use packages in a syntax they don't want to take the time to learn.

Could version control get you part way there?

Re: Show HN: We've open-sourced our bootstrapped startup, ShareLaTeX

#77

Post by malnourish »

I use ShareLaTeX for all of my computer science and mathematics homework and I convinced many of my peers to as well. Thank you for the excellent product. When I saw the email in my inbox earlier today I was shocked, but I am glad that you have reached this decision.

Re: Show HN: We've open-sourced our bootstrapped startup, ShareLaTeX

#78

Post by jpallen »

grittathh wrote: post #60

Thank you for open-sourcing this! At the moment I'm using sharelatex to keep a version of all my equations "alive" since every time someone tries to resave my word documents, the equations become rendered to images. Unfortunately for me, Latex hasn't gained traction in our department. I think the main barriers to entry, for our lab at least, are: 1) Local installation is more difficult than installing Word. Sharelate…

Our history system isn't great at the moment. We made the classic mistake of building a feature that doesn't really work for a lot of people. However, we understand want people want a lot better now and we're working on something that is very inspired/copied from the change tracking in Word. It's a very popular request!

Re: Show HN: We've open-sourced our bootstrapped startup, ShareLaTeX

#79

Post by craftsman »

jpallen wrote: post #28
theallan wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I (and I suspect many others here) would be very interested to know what effect this will have on your turnover. I guess you will get some increased revenue as others have indicated in this thread, but also loose some for those who just fire up their own installation. Presumably you won't really know until your try it, but do you have any data to support that it might increase your revenue (assuming of course that is…

We don't have any hard data - this is based on our personal vision, and our understanding of our user base. People mostly use ShareLaTeX because: 1) There is no installation, 2) You can access it anywhere, 3) You can collaborate easily and effectively without needing to be technical and know git/svn/etc. I don't think being open source will threaten any of those points, but it will make ShareLaTeX accessible to the l…

Please do post an update. I have a side project I'm starting that will be a paid service, but I'd like to AGPL it in keeping with the free software philosophy.

Re: Show HN: We've open-sourced our bootstrapped startup, ShareLaTeX

#80

Post by subdane »

infruset wrote: post #65
subdane wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoa hey! I've been looking for something like this! Do you have any examples online of your group-created notes?

I do, however the issue is I had to make them publicly editable. If I post the link on HN, I'm worried about what would happen.. Do you want to see the sharelatex document, or would a pdf suffice?

PDF is fine! Thank you!
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