Papeeria: Cloud LaTeX Editor and Scientific IDE
In one line: it advertises Papiria, an online document preparation service in LaTeX. Go to papeeria.com .
If you are a student, then for sure you are either writing a term paper or a diploma, or you are seriously thinking about it. If you also study at a technical university and there are a lot of formulas and other non-text in your work, then perhaps you are thinking about what to write in LibreOffice / Word or LaTeX. And perhaps the only thing stopping you from using LaTeX is that Word is at hand, take it and write, and you need to install the latex, mess with the almost inevitable pitfalls and then stupidly look at the white sheet and think where to start. Here we also want to help you. And also to those who want to conduct their scientific work from any place where there is Internet.
For everyone else: if you don’t know what latex is, then we recommend google (you can start, for example, from here) If you know something and just want to troll on latex vs word, then look for yourself, please, another clearing. We will be very grateful.
Briefly about the team: two people are actively involved in the development, we are both from the Faculty of Mathematics and Mechanics of St. Petersburg State University, which we use as a testing ground.
In general, we are making a kind of cloud-based IDE for scientific work (see details in the next section). But since the main result in scientific work is the text of an article or a diploma, we started with the LaTeX editor. Here is a picture for you.
No need to download the TeX distribution and configure it. Go to papeeria.com from your favorite browser (we recommend Chrome or Firefox), register with a Google or Vkontakte account, look at a demo document, and then type and compile your own hello world.
We support XeTeX and PDFLaTeX. Pictures, bibtex, tikz, beamer, listings, it all works.
The result of compilation is usually a PDF document, and if it turned out, then we will try to show it to you next to your source text. If any compilation errors occurred, then we will analyze the error log, show you readable messages in the error panel and the link will lead you from the message to the line in which the error is detected.
For those who are afraid of a blank slate, we have several templates for complete documents. There is a template for diploma / term paper on the requirements of the SPbMU matthem, with formulas, pictures and a list of references. There is a presentation beamer template. There is a resume template approved by the best HRs of St. Petersburg :)
Few people write articles alone. The supervisor sometimes wants to take a look at the text and make comments, you may want to ask someone to do proofreading, and finally you may just have a few collaborators. It would be great if you could jointly edit the text in the same way as in Google Docs, but so far we do not have such an opportunity. But there is an opportunity to give access to "reading and compilation", and at least your colleagues will be able to see your text and express their comments to you.
We do not tie you to the cloud. You can at any time download your project as a ZIP archive and work on it offline. On the contrary, you can upload a ZIP with an existing project and continue to work on it in the cloud.
Everything that we have at the moment is provided and will be provided free of charge. We, of course, are not good fairies with a bag of gold. Compilation costs money, and we will do paid services, but the basic functionality sufficient for writing a diploma will remain free.
The service opened in February, and since then we have got dozens of users who are gaining term papers and diplomas, and as far as we know, they are satisfied. A couple of times there were crashes fixed quickly and without data loss. However, Papyria is formally in alpha form, so adventure is possible. However, we will do everything so that they are not there.
We ourselves are actively using our product: programmer # 0 makes beamer presentations for his lectures, and programmer # 1 is gaining a thesis.
Let me remind you that we do not bind to the service. Trust us or not - decide for yourself.
We have competitors and we are not afraid to talk about them. These are primarily sharelatex.com and writelatex.com . These are solid and interesting products that were born much earlier than Papyria, and their functionality is richer in places.
We compete with them in LaTeX typesetting, but our plans go further. Our dream is to transfer online everything related to scientific work, and this is not only a text. This is a graphing of the results of experiments (what gnuplot, matlab, R, or even just Excel does now). This is the work of assessors to evaluate the results obtained (is the image in this picture correctly recognized, is it really a human head, not a dog’s head?). This is the launch of the actual experimental calculations, especially on big data. This is an automatic search for relevant research and conferences. Maybe something else that we don’t know about yet.
On Twitter, the latest news and announcements about phakaps: twitter.com/papeeria
On Google+, news in more detail and with pictures: plus.google.com/114845278978846632632/posts
The Feedback button dangles in the interface of Papyria, through it you can report a bug or offer an idea.
You can write to papeeria-feedback@bardsoftware.com, but as long as the discussion does not fall into the discussion of few interesting details, we prefer to conduct it openly.
Have fun, use it, tell us about problems or vice versa, about achievements. It is important for us to know about both this and that.
Introduction
If you are a student, then for sure you are either writing a term paper or a diploma, or you are seriously thinking about it. If you also study at a technical university and there are a lot of formulas and other non-text in your work, then perhaps you are thinking about what to write in LibreOffice / Word or LaTeX. And perhaps the only thing stopping you from using LaTeX is that Word is at hand, take it and write, and you need to install the latex, mess with the almost inevitable pitfalls and then stupidly look at the white sheet and think where to start. Here we also want to help you. And also to those who want to conduct their scientific work from any place where there is Internet.
For everyone else: if you don’t know what latex is, then we recommend google (you can start, for example, from here) If you know something and just want to troll on latex vs word, then look for yourself, please, another clearing. We will be very grateful.
Briefly about the team: two people are actively involved in the development, we are both from the Faculty of Mathematics and Mechanics of St. Petersburg State University, which we use as a testing ground.
What we already have
In general, we are making a kind of cloud-based IDE for scientific work (see details in the next section). But since the main result in scientific work is the text of an article or a diploma, we started with the LaTeX editor. Here is a picture for you.
Online editor
No need to download the TeX distribution and configure it. Go to papeeria.com from your favorite browser (we recommend Chrome or Firefox), register with a Google or Vkontakte account, look at a demo document, and then type and compile your own hello world.
Hello LaTeX Template
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{CMU Serif}
\begin{document}
Привет \LaTeX!
\end{document}
We support XeTeX and PDFLaTeX. Pictures, bibtex, tikz, beamer, listings, it all works.
PDF viewer and error navigation
The result of compilation is usually a PDF document, and if it turned out, then we will try to show it to you next to your source text. If any compilation errors occurred, then we will analyze the error log, show you readable messages in the error panel and the link will lead you from the message to the line in which the error is detected.
Patterns
For those who are afraid of a blank slate, we have several templates for complete documents. There is a template for diploma / term paper on the requirements of the SPbMU matthem, with formulas, pictures and a list of references. There is a presentation beamer template. There is a resume template approved by the best HRs of St. Petersburg :)
Teamwork
Few people write articles alone. The supervisor sometimes wants to take a look at the text and make comments, you may want to ask someone to do proofreading, and finally you may just have a few collaborators. It would be great if you could jointly edit the text in the same way as in Google Docs, but so far we do not have such an opportunity. But there is an opportunity to give access to "reading and compilation", and at least your colleagues will be able to see your text and express their comments to you.
Import and export projects
We do not tie you to the cloud. You can at any time download your project as a ZIP archive and work on it offline. On the contrary, you can upload a ZIP with an existing project and continue to work on it in the cloud.
How much does it cost and can it be trusted
Everything that we have at the moment is provided and will be provided free of charge. We, of course, are not good fairies with a bag of gold. Compilation costs money, and we will do paid services, but the basic functionality sufficient for writing a diploma will remain free.
The service opened in February, and since then we have got dozens of users who are gaining term papers and diplomas, and as far as we know, they are satisfied. A couple of times there were crashes fixed quickly and without data loss. However, Papyria is formally in alpha form, so adventure is possible. However, we will do everything so that they are not there.
We ourselves are actively using our product: programmer # 0 makes beamer presentations for his lectures, and programmer # 1 is gaining a thesis.
What a presentation looks like in LaTeX
Let me remind you that we do not bind to the service. Trust us or not - decide for yourself.
Our competitors and our plans
We have competitors and we are not afraid to talk about them. These are primarily sharelatex.com and writelatex.com . These are solid and interesting products that were born much earlier than Papyria, and their functionality is richer in places.
We compete with them in LaTeX typesetting, but our plans go further. Our dream is to transfer online everything related to scientific work, and this is not only a text. This is a graphing of the results of experiments (what gnuplot, matlab, R, or even just Excel does now). This is the work of assessors to evaluate the results obtained (is the image in this picture correctly recognized, is it really a human head, not a dog’s head?). This is the launch of the actual experimental calculations, especially on big data. This is an automatic search for relevant research and conferences. Maybe something else that we don’t know about yet.
Our contacts
On Twitter, the latest news and announcements about phakaps: twitter.com/papeeria
On Google+, news in more detail and with pictures: plus.google.com/114845278978846632632/posts
The Feedback button dangles in the interface of Papyria, through it you can report a bug or offer an idea.
You can write to papeeria-feedback@bardsoftware.com, but as long as the discussion does not fall into the discussion of few interesting details, we prefer to conduct it openly.
Have fun, use it, tell us about problems or vice versa, about achievements. It is important for us to know about both this and that.