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Comment by jpallen | Hacker News Reader

I'm trying to expand my online LaTeX editor into a viable business. My cofounder and I think there is potential for a great enterprise product where we could really improve the workflow in publishing houses and teaching, where LaTeX is used a lot. We've had enough feedback from individual users to think this, but we're struggling to get our foot in the door with the people we'd need to talk to about selling to them on a larger scale.

Basically we're new to this game and are struggling to get started. I don't know if you or anyone can help, but it's worth a shot. Thank you very much for lending your time like this, I hope the karma comes back to you!

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I've written any paper I've worked on in the last 7 years in LaTeX as soon as it gets over 5 pages or has any math of any kind in it.

I'm currently writing a book with a publish house that uses Word templates (dear god!) and it really sucks. =)

Here are a few pain points you need to solve (esp. for academics):

- All the formats: If you can offer all journal/conference formats (especially those that don't have LaTeX formats), you would be a godsend. - WYSIWYG -> LaTeX editing: Sometimes you don't want to handle all the boiler plate. - Integration with reference software.

Pain point for book houses: - Converting their carefully designed styles into LaTeX templates and back again. Can someone design up a doc template in Word or whatnot, then bring it to your site and make a LaTeX template from it?

A few questions: - How does your collaborative editing work? Can multiple people work the same file at the same time? Also, it is pretty rare that this happens in my experience - most papers are written by one person with some help from others. - In the end, without formatting or the other things mentioned above, you've got a place to store/share LaTeX docs. Given that, your pricing is a bit odd. However, with the features listed, I think it'd be a great product (at an awesome price).

Thanks for the feedback, it's really useful. I think you're right that a big problem is the lack of compatibility between word and latex, particularly since few people know both well. We've been concentrating on just the latex side since it's what we know, but taking a wider view might help.

We're currently adding in templates and formats, as well as looking at how we can better integrate with other referencing tools.

Collaborative editing is not real time but warns and merges if you are editing a document at the same. I think the ease of use for collaborating is our main selling point at the moment, but I agree our pricing needs refinement. First we need to fix our focus and main features.

Thank for your time in replying.

I think you forgot to include the link. By Googling "jpallen online latex editor", I found jpallen.net and ScribTex.

To make our volunteer's efforts more expedient, I'll note that the url is at -> http://www.scribtex.com/ <- Click that.

Thanks, I didn't think the actual site was too important and didn't want to appear spammy. But you're right, actually what ScribTeX is can only help matters!

I'd be happy to play around with it a little bit over the weekend. I know a few people in academia and will ask their opinion as well. Maybe that will provide some help...

Thanks, any feedback is really helpful, but don't worry if it's not an area you're familiar with.

If you didn't get my email, kindly get in touch with me via (my initials) (at) nobulb.com. Thanks!

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