ShareLaTeX Joins Overleaf
sharelatex.comI'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 out by the closed-source one.
Hopefully that last bit in the announcement remains true: "Both Overleaf and ShareLaTeX are committed to ensuring that all of the open ShareLaTeX code base will remain open source and will continue to be actively developed."
Thanks for the kind words about ShareLaTeX! It's always great to hear that people have enjoyed it.
The open source nature of ShareLaTeX isn't just about being good internet citizens, it's also been core to the ShareLaTeX business. As far as we can tell, it's only helped us to grow, from community goodwill, publicity, and onboarding for our onsite enterprise offering. We're very much bringing two thriving businesses together here, to get to where we want to get to quicker, without duplicating effort. And the open-source aspect is a strength that we plan to keep.
- James, ShareLaTeX co-founder
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.
ShareLaTeX dev here.
We're very much committed to that statement, we wouldn't say it otherwise :)
Baawaahhh!!!!
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)
Thanks for the suggestion! We have played around with pandoc as an option in the ShareLaTeX compiler, but we weren't able to get it working smoothly enough for us to be happy with it. But it's definitely on our radar.
CoCalc isn't so famous for latex editing, but it has a proper Linux terminal with pandoc. That allows you to automate some tasks, etc.
Which code editor are you going to keep? ShareLaTeX and Overleaf use different technology and look quite different.
The current plan is to base the new editor on the the ShareLaTeX editor, but bring in the good parts of Overleaf to it.
Hopefully vi-support, that's the feature that brought me to overleaf in the first place!
Vi support is same in both Ace used in ShareLaTex and CodeMirror used in Overleaf
Are you all looking into allowing the use of the editor offline and then syncing the changes when the user gets online?
Not as a direct product offering from us, but we want to make sure it's always easy to get your work in and out of Overleaf/ShareLaTeX, and work offline, via things like git, GitHub and Dropbox.
> Yes. Both Overleaf and ShareLaTeX are committed to ensuring that all of the open ShareLaTeX code base will remain open source and will continue to be actively developed.
That's a fairly disengenous answer to the question. The code is AGPLv3+ licensed and they are not the sole copyright holder (it is true that that have a CLA[1] but from a quick reading the CLA says that they "agree to also license the Contribution under the terms of the license or licenses which We are using for the Material on the Submission Date").
What people want to know is whether ShareLaTeX is going to just become a tiny free software part of a larger proprietary platform. It appears to me that this is likely going to be the case, which is a real shame since I've always respected that the entireity of ShareLaTeX was AGPLv3+.
I hope ShareLaTeX doesn't become another victim of "Our Incredible Journey"[2].
[1]: https://sharelatex.wufoo.com/forms/sharelatex-contributor-li... [2]: https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/
Overleaf founder here: We’re going to make sure that there is still an open source version that you can download and run yourself. We’re still working out the details of how we’ll do that, but if that involves open sourcing parts of Overleaf, then that's what we'll do.
Almost all of my team has individual subscriptions to sharelatex because we felt it was better from a books perspective to show there is more individual interest in an open source solution than corporate interest. We specifically chose sharelatex instead of overleaf so we could host our own instance. We've largely moved away from using sharelatex but still keep our subscriptions active as a form of support for continued development.
I hope what you say is true about the commitment to open source.
Thanks storrgie -- I'd like to echo James' point (in his reply to pfooti) that this is very much two teams coming together to build on each others strengths, and we see the open source aspect of ShareLaTeX as an important part of that.
That's a nice decision. Thanks for committing to it so quickly in public. Props.
Good luck with the product merge. Don't wreck it with complexity :)
OverLeaf user here. Thank you. It's awesome.
Me too, it's awesome indeed, not sure we could have collaborated without it. Many thanks.
ShareLaTeX founder here.
Just to confirm, the goal here is to say that the open source will not be left to rot in the corner, its going to remain at the centre of the company. You will see updates and improvements coming in the future.
I hope that the documentation for ShareLaTeX stays online; of all the resources on LaTeX available, their documention stands above the rest in terms of clarity. The other day, I wanted to know how to do a proper quote, made a quick Google search, and I was happy that the first result was ShareLaTeX and I found the answer to my question.
Yep, there's no way that we'd remove all of this! It's taken us a long time to build up that documentation, and it will continue to be maintained and updated.
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 stays included with the free version.
Oh really? I used the web editor once but then switched to a local Git workflow. I'll look into Overleaf again then.
Yes. It's a feature "hidden" in the "share" button. I didn't know it first until my prof told me.
I think overleaf should publicize this feature more prominently.
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.
I've used both Overleaf and Sharelatex quite a bit, and think both products are great and have different strengths. It was frustrating to have to choose and have my Latex files split between the two, and this niche does not feel big enough to merit two competing great products, so I was pretty happy to hear about this.
I'm pretty excited for this. Overleaf is awesome! I've used it for a few years and have over 50 projects on my dashboard, but I checked out sharelatex a few months ago and was pretty impressed by some of their features. I didn't feel like switching because I feel a bit invested in overleaf with the number of projects, so I didn't investigate further. I hope that this can merge the best features of both programs and make latex more accessible than ever.
Side question for the overleaf team: do you have any plans to make overleaf truly ios compatible? Yes, I know I can open it in the browser just fine (and kudos for that!), but when it takes 3 taps for every backslash or brace I need, it really doesn't work to do much more than minor modifications to existing documents. There really needs to be an easier way of typing the punctuation needed.
Hi Pitaa -- thanks for this, great to hear you've been a regular Overleaf user and have enjoyed it! :)
On your side question: it's a tricky one, as although we do try to keep pace with the different browser updates to keep in the in-browser experience ok on ios, I agree it's not ideal. Long term we do want to do something better, but it's not an immediate priority (given that mobile use of Overleaf for editing is still relatively low, and we find that a lot of tablet users use separate keyboards). Hope that helps clarify, even if I don't have an immediate solution!
I've never used Overleaf, but for several years I used ShareLaTeX as my primary LaTeX editor. I've since switched to using LaTeX through emacs but I still regularly use ShareLaTeX's great documentation and if I didn't carrying my Linux laptop around everywhere, I'd probably still be using ShareLaTeX. Hopefully this new partnership won't ruin it.
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 frontend on top of the Overleaf backend. That would be a truly powerful combination.
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."
I really hope that the ShareLaTeX UX will survive. If I had to use Overleaf's UI, I might seriously consider canceling the subscription. The dark theme is nothing you want to use on a daily basis. Otherwise, ShareLaTeX also worked much faster and had way better example snippets, I think?
I'm optimistic that you do the transition, with Open Source.
Why it is better than offline editor (like TeXnicCenter) and code repository (like Git)?
Hahaha.
Although most users of LaTeX are in the STEM fields, they're also way too busy with actual research to find joy in dicking around with command-line tools.
I think the computer field is unusual in that computer people think everyone must be dying to learn The Way even if it costs them time and (from their perspective at least) risks significant losses. Doctors advise diet and exercise, but don't find it puzzling when people don't.
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?
I can make small edits on my phone, and more importantly reread it to find errors. If I think of something at work, I can open in a tab. I can send my current draft to someone so they can add feedback inline. I can make changes based on their feedback, and don't have to resend them anything. Informal reviewers don't have to keep track of versions of my document, going to the url is always the most recent.
Even more importantly, setting up and maintaining a latex installation may not be a lot of time, but if you don't have much time, it becomes a bigger fraction of it. It's a big activation energy to get over if you don't have a lot of energy.
If you are writing papers regularly, then you may find it worth it, or easy to invest in your own setup. If you aren't, it is a lot to manage.
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.
Sharelatex has vim bindings that are quite good.
Yeah, but I find that nothing really matches the real Vim or Neovim. Especially since I have a lot of macros and mappings configured that make editing documents in "Vim-like" editors feel more painful because my muscle memory tries to use macros that aren't defined.
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).
One reason: Sharelatex has nice features for collaboration (such as editing suggestions, history, etc.).
This is pretty much it.
It can be a lift to get non-computer-savvy folks to use a highly-managed system like ShareLatex (which is a great system). But it would be impossible (not merely difficult) to do so if "just use git for collaboration" is your message!
If a lot of your documents are collaborative, this turns out to be a major factor. (For my personal work, I'm happy to use Emacs and TeXshop and keep all files resident on my laptop.)
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/
I prefer for 1gb+ of latex code to not touch my laptop if I can avoid it.
Yeah that seems like a huge thing anyway.
LaTeX is from the 80s. I understand it has grown over time, but to >1GB? That's huge, even for modern standards, for just a typesetting program. The documentation is a dependency that seems to be forced on you (it's not an optional dependency in Debian), and fonts are also big. But even without that, you're left with about 600MB if I recall correctly which is still huge for just formatting text right?
But it's not "just" a typesetting program. The TeXlive installation includes a huge amount of packages, supporting all kinds of typesetting, including maths, music sheets, pictures (TikZ), support for making posters, presentations, various little enhancements like microtype etc. etc.
I am quite happy to dedicate 1GB to that. Especially in a world, where random websites tend to dump 3-4MB on me (with liberal use of adblockers) to render a few paragraphs of text.
I've been able to write European proposals using LaTeX only because I adopted ShareLaTeX quickly. Other researchers might appreciate the auto-formatting and indexing, but a complicated install procedure is too much to ask. Perfect compromise because I vehemently deny to use Word for complicated documents.
I've also found it very helpful when I need to edit a paper but am not near a computer with LaTeX installed.
Because then you don't have to deal with texlive/miktex dependencies
I've used both Overleaf and Sharelatex for my senior work and this move is worrying. I started with Overleaf but had to migrate over to Sharelatex due to the raw size of my file, which overleaf limits (at least in their free tier). Note that i'm not talking about data storage per user account, but a maximum document size. I hope the new platform adopts Sharelatex's file size limit.
ShareLaTeX is such a joy to use. I used to write a lot of LaTeX, but don't anymore, so don't even have it installed on my laptop. Whenever I need to typeset anything, I just pop it into their web interface, do some light editing and off I go.
It's clean, fast, not clunky, it just does what it's supposed to. I wish you all the best, guys.
DAE keep finding their eye drawn to this headline because their brain sees it as a story about Shia LaBeouf?
I mean, I don't really care about Shia LaBeouf, but I'm unfamiliar with ShareLaTeX and Overleaf so I keep pausing on this headline as I parse it.
Okay so instead of two competing products we now have one.
Huge fan of ShareLaTeX, looking forward to see the rest
I love ShareLatex. What is going to happen to existing customers?
That does seem to be rather explicitly spelled out in the post :)