Online LaTeX Editor

Focus on the content and CoCalc takes care of everything else

Edit LaTeX documents right inside your browser – no software install required!

CoCalc's LaTeX editor supports

CoCalc makes working with LaTeX easy:

  • Scared of breaking a document? Revert recent changes via time-travel edit history.
  • You do not have to worry about installing and maintaining your LaTeX environment.
  • You can work from anywhere; you only need a web-browser and internet access.
  • Periodic backups keep all your files safe and secure.

Ready out of the box: Sign up, create a project, and create/upload a *.tex file and you're ready to tex.

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Overview

Managed LaTeX environments

CoCalc makes sure that your desired LaTeX engine is available and ready to use. You can choose between PDF Latex, XeLaTeX or LuaTeX.
Many packages and utilities like PGF&TikZ are pre-installed.
Behind the scenes, LatexMK is configured to manage the compilation process, which means that you do not have to bother too much about any additional configuration.
Besides that, it is possible to fully customize the compilation command. This means you can bring your own Shell-script or Makefile!

Collaborative editing without limits

Privately share your project with any number of collaborators. Concurrent modifications of the LaTeX document are synchronized in real time. You see the cursors of others while they edit the document and also see the presence of watching collaborators.
Additionally, the compilation status and the resulting output is synchronized between everyone, because everything runs online and is fully managed by CoCalc.
This ensures that everyone involved experiences editing the document in exactly the same way.

Full computational environment

What sets CoCalc apart from other online LaTeX editors is full access to computational software. This means you can seamlessly transition from computing your results to publishing them.
CoCalc supports running Python, SageMath, R Statistical Software, Julia, and more in the same project as your LaTeX document.
Consult the Available Software page or look at our Jupyter Notebook page for more information.

Run calculations inside your LaTeX documents!

Embed Sage, R, or Python code in your document to automatically generate text, plots, formulas or tables. The code is evaluated as part of the compilation process and the output will be included in the generated document.

SageTeX

SageTeX lets you embed SageMath in your document!
Write Sage commands like \sage{2 + 2} in LaTeX and the document will contain "4", \sage{f.taylor(x, 0, 10)} for the Taylor-expansion a function "f", and drawing graphs becomes as simple as \sageplot{sin(x)}.
CoCalc deals with all the underlying details for you:
  • It runs the initial compilation pass,
  • uses Sage/Python to compute the text output and graphs/images,
  • and then runs a second compilation pass to produce the final output.

PythonTeX

PythonTeX allows you to run Python from within a document and typeset the results.
For example, \py{2 + 4**2} produces "18". You can use all available python libraries for Python 3, and in particular, check out PythonTeX's support for SymPy and drawing plots via pylab.
Again, CoCalc automatically detects that you want to run PythonTeX and handles all the details for you.

R/Knitr

CoCalc's Latex editor also supports Knitr .Rnw documents. This gives you the ability to embed arbitrary R Software commands and plots in your LaTeX file.
Behind the scenes, CoCalc deals with all underlying details for you:
  • installation and management of all R packages,
  • orchestrates the full compilation pipeline for LaTeX and running R, and
  • reconciles the line-numbers of the .Rnw file with the corresponding .tex document for correct forward/inverse search.

Features

Forward/Inverse search

▶
click to play
Let CoCalc help you find your way around in large documents!
Forward Search lets you jump from the LaTeX source to the corresponding part in the rendered preview. That saves you time looking for the output by scrolling around.
Inverse search does the opposite: double-click on a part in the output and your cursor jumps (roughly) to the line in the source file for that output.
Under the hood, CoCalc uses SyncTeX seamlessly.

Time-Travel

The Time-travel feature is specific to the CoCalc platform. It records all changes in the LaTeX notebook in fine detail. You can go back and forth in time across hundreds of changes to recover your previous edits.
This is especially helpful for pinpointing which of the recent changes did cause a compilation error. You can see the most recent changes during the past few minutes and see exactly where the modification happenend.

Side-Chat panel

A side-by-side chat for each LaTeX file gives you the ability to discuss the content with your project collaborators or give feedback to your students working on their assignments.
Collaborators who are offline will be notified about new messages the next time they sign in.
Chat messages also support Markdown formatting and LaTeX formulas.

Backups

Every couple of minutes, all files in your project are saved in consistent read-only snapshots.
This means you can always recover older versions of your files in case they got corrupted or accidentally deleted.

Publishing

CoCalc helps you sharing your work with the world. It offers its own hosting of shared documents, alongside with any associated data files.
You can configure if your published files should be listed publicly, or rather only be available via a confidential URL.

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