Collaborative creation of scientific text documents with ShareLaTeX

LaTeX is the standard tool for text typesetting, especially in the scientific environment. It allows you to translate the textual description of a document and its layout into a formatted output, such as a PDF file. In addition to scientific papers, a wide variety of other documents, such as presentations or letters, can also be generated.

Since different authors are often involved in the creation of such a document, the ability to edit it collaboratively is desirable. This is possible through the web service ShareLaTeX, which offers users the possibility to collaborate online and in real time with other authors on a document. It also provides features to review and discuss changes, as well as a rich text mode that makes LaTeX easier to handle for less experienced users by graphing the code.

This service is commercially distributed by Overleaf. Since the code of the ShareLaTeX system used for this is under an open source license, it is freely available, but some essential components that are needed to run the server are missing. However, these have now been re-implemented in the Scientific IT Systems department of the PGI/JCNS-TA in such a way that almost the entire functional range of ShareLaTeX is available.

Since this type of tool was already in demand in various institutes on campus, PGI/JCNS is now making its solution available to the entire campus. As the service has been fully integrated into the central login service of PGI/JCNS, which manages access to various web services such as CodiMD (iffMD), JupyterHub (iffjupyter) and ShareLaTeX (iffTeX), you can simply login using your complete Forschungszentrum Jülich mail address (m.mustermann@fz-juelich.de) and the corresponding password.

Introduction: https://pgi-jcns.fz-juelich.de/portal/pages/services.html#anchor-ifftex

iffTeX GitLab Integration

iffTeX Grammar Checker

Further information: https://www.overleaf.com/learn

iffTeX Workflow

Login

Create a project

Create a blank project

Use a template

Upload an existing project

Edit

Edit in rich text mode

Track changes and comment

Configure compiler and spell checking

Share with other users

Share a link with external collaborators

Publish

Download the compiled PDF document

Download the project source code

Please note: The ShareLaTeX system is not a replacement for a desktop publishing solution. Of course it has its charm to be able to share a web-based word processing program with colleagues without any installation effort - but if there is no need for collaboration we still recommend the use of common desktop solutions, e.g. TeXlive + Texmaker.