Featured Post

We've moved to tex.my!

It’s been great writing on Blogger.com, but we’ve decided to move to a new platform, thanks to some valuable help from a great, great friend...

Sunday, May 9, 2010

LaTeX Lab, a web-based (collaborative) LaTeX editor

LaTeX Lab is a web-based LaTeX, using Google Docs as its platform so you'll need a Google login to try it out. Since “sharing” a document is a default feature in Google Docs, LaTeX Lab can be used as an online collaborative editor.



Once saved, your LaTeX file will show up in your Google Docs file list, but you must access open it again via the LaTeX Lab link to get the LaTeX editor GUI. Opening the file from Google Docs will just show it as a plain text file, without the LaTeX syntax highlighting and toolbars etc.

However it’s still a preview release, so you probably don’t want to depend on it for your day-to-day use just yet!

8 comments:

  1. i tried it once... later I found scribtex. But LaTexLab is definitely cool,especially if we're on travel and no latex compiler around

    ReplyDelete
  2. One major problem I see is that the connection between the browser and server seems not to be encrypted (no HTTPS available). I personally like using browser based tools but security is an important issue (btw: maybe also check http://www.verbosus.com which allows HTTPS)

    ReplyDelete
  3. @najmi: I'm glad that you like ScribTeX [1]. If you aren't aware of it, it's another in browser LaTeX editor with good support for collaboration. It also allows access via HTTPS like cribbling mentions.

    [1] http://www.scribtex.com

    ReplyDelete
  4. James: yeps, Scribtex also supports ArabTeX too..so I think if I am in the airport for example with wireless access I can do my work via the terminal as well.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Najmi, James: Thanks for the heads up, ScribTeX certainly looks and feels snazzy! I like it that it supports custom style files.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Google should buy them and integrate it in docs.
    It's really good

    ReplyDelete
  7. UPDATE: Daniel Stender has just posted a review on online LaTeX editing at http://www.danielstender.com/granthinam/1995/

    ReplyDelete
  8. A light weight alternative is Tex the World for Firefox http://thewe.net/tex/ . It allows inline creation of formulas in a google document.

    ReplyDelete