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ShareLaTeX Joins Overleaf

sharelatex.com

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Re: ShareLaTeX Joins Overleaf

#41

Post by Tijdreiziger »

mettamage wrote: post #18

Sharelatex changed my life in the world of LaTeX editors. With normal LaTeX I installed 10 GB of stuff, had no collaboration tools and no spellchecker, no good folder structure thing. It's those small GUI aspects that really made me appreciate ShareLaTeX.

My MiKTeX installation is under 1 GB (MiKTeX pulls packages on-demand, so there aren't gigabytes of unused packages on your disk) and the excellent TeXstudio editor has a spell-checker enabled by default.

ShareLaTeX is excellent for collaboration, but I much prefer a local setup when that's unnecessary.

Re: ShareLaTeX Joins Overleaf

#42

Post by Tijdreiziger »

benrbray wrote: post #21
y4mi wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I've used both and have to say that overleafs interface is way better... So no, it won't ruin it.

Overleaf has its advantages (e.g. better git integration) but I haven't heard much praise for their editor. In my own experience, the Overleaf editor is slower and more cumbersome to use than ShareLaTeX. It's much harder to rearrange files and compile time to PDF is much slower. You also can't set your main doc to be in a subdirectory of the project. I hope this partnership means we'll soon have the ShareLaTeX fronte…

That seems to be what they're aiming for: "The ShareLaTeX editor will be at the core of the new platform, on top of the Overleaf ecosystem."

Re: ShareLaTeX Joins Overleaf

#43

Post by leipert »

mk321 wrote: post #6

Why it is better than offline editor (like TeXnicCenter) and code repository (like Git)?

ShareLaTeX user here.

I recently typeset a (stunning looking) master thesis for a friend and she was able to edit the text while I dealt with formatting, setting stuff up, etc. (Well for that project, also big props to pandoc [1], as it easily converted docx to tex including footnotes!)

Otherwise it's nice, because I set up shared projects with good looking CVs for some non-tech friends and even a template to write nice looking letters/invoices and they know what to change and how and I could hide most of the stuff going on in template files.

[1]: http://pandoc.org/

Re: ShareLaTeX Joins Overleaf

#44

Post by Tijdreiziger »

carlosdp wrote: post #16
y4mi wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both sharelatex and overleaf support git. You can pull/push directly to their sites or pair them to a GitHub repo iirc. It's significantly easier to do collaborative editing of latex files with such a web service. But even a single person might want to use them, because maintaining latex dependencies can be bothersome.

This, the dependencies are annoying to deal with. With ShareLatex, it "just works"

A local MiKTeX installation handles this beautifully (MiKTeX is a LaTeX distribution which comes with a bare set of default packages, and then downloads packages from the internet transparently upon compilation if they're necessary).

Re: ShareLaTeX Joins Overleaf

#45

Post by leipert »

jpallen wrote: post #27

Hey, James from ShareLaTeX here. We’re very excited about what this means for ShareLaTeX and Overleaf! The blog post says most of what we wanted to say, but all four founders from ShareLaTeX and Overleaf are around this evening (we’re in the UK) to answer questions if you have any. Give us a little while to reply though, since we’re all trying to have dinner too! :)

I just did your survey, but forgot to mention a feature idea. I recently finished a typesetting a master thesis, which I converted with pandoc from docx to tex. Together with the Harvard Thesis template it was a bliss and took just ~6 hours to set the ~80 pages.

Maybe a document converting feature (via pandoc!?) would help the merged product :) (And I would totally pay for that :D)

Re: ShareLaTeX Joins Overleaf

#46

Post by marricks »

pfooti wrote: post #17

I'm somewhat bummed about this - I am a big fan of ShareLaTeX, and have been using it for quite some time. I absolutely love that the whole thing is built on an open-source engine (not just the latex part - you can self-host if you want). Overleaf has a lot of also-interesting features, and probably a more robust revenue stream, but it's always a bit of a bummer when the open-source player in the market gets bought o…

Time will tell, even if people have the best intentions a company doesn't usually buy out an competitor with an open source component to make it even better competition.

The business interests of the original company have changed, and unless they plan to make that open source product a part of the larger company, that focus will need to change quite possibly for the personnel who were maintaining it. I guess this really hinges on how they merge Overleaf and ShareLaTex, but I find it hard to imagine they'll open up that whole merged thing to self hosting?

Not trying to knock anyone, it's one of those times companies have every reason to say things will stay rosey and open because you don't want to offend your base, but no one can honestly promise that because priorities have and inevitably will change.

Re: ShareLaTeX Joins Overleaf

#47

Post by Cyph0n »

itsmenow wrote: post #26

I personally much prefer using a local setup (editor+plugins+instantaneous compiling, etc), but of course collaboration is painful that way, especially given my collaborators much prefer web-based/shared work-flows. Just few days ago, however, discovered that I can use an overleaf project as just a git repo, then push/pull as I see fit. That is an amazing feature!... everyone get to work how they want. Hope that it s…

Oh really? I used the web editor once but then switched to a local Git workflow. I'll look into Overleaf again then.

Re: ShareLaTeX Joins Overleaf

#48

Post by Cyph0n »

Tijdreiziger wrote: post #41
mettamage wrote: post #18

Sharelatex changed my life in the world of LaTeX editors. With normal LaTeX I installed 10 GB of stuff, had no collaboration tools and no spellchecker, no good folder structure thing. It's those small GUI aspects that really made me appreciate ShareLaTeX.

My MiKTeX installation is under 1 GB (MiKTeX pulls packages on-demand, so there aren't gigabytes of unused packages on your disk) and the excellent TeXstudio editor has a spell-checker enabled by default. ShareLaTeX is excellent for collaboration, but I much prefer a local setup when that's unnecessary.

I'm running the same setup. TeXstudio is absolutely fantastic.

Re: ShareLaTeX Joins Overleaf

#49

Post by Nullabillity »

moultano wrote: post #34
mk321 wrote: post #6

Why it is better than offline editor (like TeXnicCenter) and code repository (like Git)?

I can work from any device in any little snippet of time I have available, and all I need is a browser. That flexibility allowed me to make progress even with a job and two kids. I submitted my first paper recently, and I don't think I would have ever gotten traction without the convenience of overleaf.

What device do you have that is comfortable enough to write long-form on, but is too weak to run LaTeX?

Re: ShareLaTeX Joins Overleaf

#50

Post by Nullabillity »

cyphar wrote: post #9
mk321 wrote: post #6

Why it is better than offline editor (like TeXnicCenter) and code repository (like Git)?

I've used ShareLaTeX before, and it's sort of the same reason why Dropbox is (sometimes) better than using rsync. Yes, I would prefer to edit everything in Vim but personally LaTeX environments have always been more pain to setup than they've been worth, and ShareLaTeX just works. Also they support collaborative editing and adding editor notes to a document.

`pacman -S texlive-most` pretty much just works as well.
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