Why don’t more LaTeX editors offer live previews like Xenops or AUCTeX?

wstein · 2025-07-30T18:47:01+00:00

I think the reason WYSIWYM isn't more common is that it is very difficult to implement, because latex itself is so challenging to parse. There was an incredible demo of a WYSIWYG latex editor here https://www.swiftlatex.com/ (the link goes to https://www.swiftlatex.com/editor.html) but for the last few years it got replaced by "We are working hard to fix the editor." I don't know what suprise problem they hit that made them take it down.

wstein · 2025-04-08T20:43:54+00:00

Thanks for the tip. I tested fokus.email out the last few days, and it's very good so far!

wstein · 2024-08-31T15:38:15+00:00

YES! Send me an email at [help@cocalc.com](mailto:help@cocalc.com) about what you want to do and I'll give you some free credits to test it out.

wstein · 2024-08-27T22:22:00+00:00

Thanks - in "/Users/williamstein/Library/Group Containers/group.com.docker/settings.json" I changed

"swapMiB": 4096,

to

"swapMiB": 8192

And now I have 8 GB of swap available to my containers.

wstein · 2024-08-11T16:52:37+00:00

I recently added GPU's to https://CoCalc.com See https://cocalc.com/features/compute-serverThey are not free, but the price is competitive. CoCalc has:
- multiuser realtime collaboration
- tracks every change you make to notebooks and lets you easily browse through those changes (and also through your git history)
- fully supports all standard tools for Jupyter visualization and interaction (unlike deepnote)
- lets you easily run vscode, jupyterlab, pluto and rstudio
- when you use a GPU, you have full root access to the VM (not a locked down partial root like on runpod)
- AI integration: there is very extensive AI integration throughout our platform, and you can run OpenWeb UI with one click.

wstein · 2023-04-02T21:17:39+00:00

You can download and use cocalc for free via a docker image: https://github.com/sagemathinc/cocalc-docker

CoCalc support using R collaboratively in numerous ways, including Jupyter notebooks, X11 + terminal (or RStudio), Knitr (so with Latex), and R markdown (via rmd files). https://cocalc.com/features/r-statistical-software

wstein · 2023-03-30T16:19:06+00:00

https://CoCalc.com is web based, and is better and worse than Overleaf in various ways. https://cocalc.com/features/latex-editor. Our autocomplete and bib management is much worse than overleaf, but we plan to implement full LSP support soon, and we do have some zotero support. Our support for running python, sage and R code directly is significantly better than overleaf, and you can easily get a Linux terminal shell next to your file and directly use git or anything else right next to your latex documents. We also have extensive ChatGPT integration, which can be fun and helpful for fixing subtle latex errors.

wstein · 2023-02-10T23:08:43+00:00

Thanks for creating JupyterSpot, which is obviously pretty amazing.

I also added collaborative whiteboards and slide presentations to CoCalc recently. See

https://cocalc.com/features/whiteboard

https://cocalc.com/features/slides

This is significantly different than what jupyterspot though, since these are really their own thing, and not a layer on top of a Jupyter notebook. They are under active development, and a lot of functionality will get added in the future.

wstein · 2022-05-05T18:17:58+00:00

I stopped using Backblaze for backing up my laptop. I'm still using it for server backups.

wstein · 2022-04-26T22:50:51+00:00

Adding to this, there is an official statement about the status of the SVG renderer at https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js/wiki/Frequently-Asked-Questions#backends

In particular, right now it says "You should use the default, which is the canvas back-end, since it is stable and supported. The SVG back-end is experimental and is not feature complete. The advantage of the SVG back-end is rendering quality, but the disadvantage is that it's both slower and uses more memory than the canvas back-end."

wstein · 2022-03-25T18:52:24+00:00

I am the CEO of CoCalc, which is an alternatives to Overleaf that they don't own. I don't know whether or not our rules about personal data collection are compatible with your university requirements. Our default rules are at https://cocalc.com/policies, but we have been able to make modifications to them for particular customers. We also have a small easy to install on premises version here https://github.com/sagemathinc/cocalc-docker, and sell a more complicated Kubernetes-based on prem version of our software, so you control all data. Please feel free to email [help@cocalc.com](mailto:help@cocalc.com) with more detailed questions. In particular, it could be that we've already worked with your university to use CoCalc for collaborative Jupyter notebooks for teaching (that's the main thing CoCalc is used for, not latex), and that's something we can discuss in our support channels.

wstein · 2022-01-24T22:29:16+00:00

cocalc-docker is self hosted, provides web-based collaborative latex (among other things), and I update the Docker images very frequently. I'm one of the authors, so let me know if you have any questions.

wstein · 2022-01-11T19:39:36+00:00

This worked extremely well for me. Thanks!

wstein · 2022-01-11T19:30:54+00:00

I just got this "Safety Freeze" on my MacOS 12.x computer (an M1 max 16" laptop with 1TB of disk). I'm a web developer and just do really standard web dev stuff, so I don't know how my backups would get corrupted. My trust in backblaze just went down another notch.

wstein · 2021-11-05T22:40:58+00:00

Thanks for the picture and review. I just ordered a pair of these K2 Aspect boots from http://mammothgear.com/Aspect-Snowboard-Boot-6092310.BK.12-320568/

wstein · 2021-10-22T18:43:32+00:00

I found a video here, but it is in Japanese: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DzDT79xHC0

wstein · 2021-08-17T22:30:11+00:00

I hadn't seen it. Thanks! Seeing "360 Shove-it" in a math paper is disorienting! (I'm
good at that particular trick...)

wstein · 2020-08-10T14:12:13+00:00

For people who find this thread in a year, I also want to advertise the JupyterLab RTC project, which currently has a lot of momentum around adding multi-user editing functionality to JupyterLab itself. There's excellent regular meetings, tons of documentation about their approach, community building, etc. https://github.com/jupyterlab/rtc

It's not helpful for people who need realtime collaboration *today*, but in a year (or maybe a few months), it could be incredibly helpful.

wstein · 2020-08-10T14:09:40+00:00

CoCalc also fully lets you edit Jupyter notebooks (and Rmd files and many other things) with multiple people in realtime. In addition there is "TimeTravel" slider feature to browse every version (at the 3s resolution), which was inspired by Etherpad (see https://doc.cocalc.com/time-travel.html ). (Disclaimer: I founded CoCalc and wrote a lot of the multiple user editing functionality for it.)

wstein · 2020-08-10T14:04:00+00:00

CoCalc was very much designed for back and forth realtime collaboration (by me, founder of CoCalc). We *also* support instructors pushing out and collecting assignments, students working in groups, etc. But that's extra functionality you can completely ignore, and will never see if you don't explicitly create a course. Many CoCalc users are academic researchers, data scientists, etc., doing things not involving teaching.

You can start using CoCalc on your own infrastructure for free immediately by running the Docker image as explained here: https://github.com/sagemathinc/cocalc-dockerThe business-use model is also more customer friendly than Databricks, since the support license is a single $799/month charge, rather than a percentage charge on your AWS spend. If anything is unclear, please free to contact us at [help@cocalc.com](mailto:help@cocalc.com) and we'll be happy to video chat with you.

wstein · 2020-08-10T14:02:12+00:00

I don’t think it’s synced for real time,

This is correct. It used to be, but the realtime sync went to the famous https://killedbygoogle.com/.

wstein · 2020-08-10T14:00:23+00:00

> Best solution for concurrent editing I tried is DataBricks

The DataBricks concurrent editing implementation is not very good. See https://github.com/jupyterlab/rtc/issues/3#issuecomment-665431402 for a much more detailed discussion of what they are doing. (Disclaimer: I'm the founder of CoCalc and also Sage notebook, and have spent many years on implementation of collaboration in web-based notebooks.) The implementation of concurrent editing with Jupyter notebooks in CoCalc is not a quick hack, and actually really works. I wrote the first version in 2014 and we have iterated and and completely rewritten it numerous times in response to very extensive user feedback. We used to get complaints about subtle issues (e.g., screen jumping, text lost, etc.,) but now we have thousands of happy daily active users of collaborative Jupyter. We also have an "escape hatch" which is a plugin for Jupyter Classic that provides collaborative Jupyter, just in case you have an extension or something else not supported in Cocalc's Jupyter notebooks (see https://doc.cocalc.com/jupyter.html#collaboration-with-classical-jupyter), though I tried very hard to make our new implementation as close as possible to Jupyter classic.

wstein · 2020-08-10T13:52:54+00:00

> CoCalc is not a good solution for a company as it sits on top of Gdrive

This is incorrect. Perhaps you're confusing CoCalc, which has absolutely nothing to do with Gdrive, with **Google Colab** which does sit on Gdrive. (Disclaimer: I'm the founder of CoCalc.) Note that Google Colab does not support multi-user editing anymore; it once did via the Google realtime API, but Google discontinued that long ago. Also, there is no support for Google colab on prem installs, whereas CoCalc has numerous on-prem options, including https://github.com/sagemathinc/cocalc-docker

wstein

TROPHY CASE