Auto-exporting of PDF files

Papeeria can now automatically upload PDF files produced by LaTeX compiler to Dropbox or Google Drive or to Papeeria project itself.

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Uploading to Dropbox and Google Drive is a premium feature which is available to users subscribed to paid plan Delta.

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Click "Options" in "Save" dropdown in the PDF viewer pane to open the options modal and choose destination files on the desired locations and optionally enable auto-saving.

If you leave the location field empty, we will generate output file names with the project name and file name built into, the same way as we do with downloadable PDF files.

File change notifications from Dropbox

Version control pane showing
file change notifications from Dropbox

If you set up Dropbox Sync for your project, you will recieve notifications when files are changed on Dropbox externally. For instance, you may upload a new version of the paper text to Dropbox through their web interface or edit files on Dropbox folder mounted to your computer using your favorite text editor.

Notifications are shown in the Version contol pane. Red dot indicates that there are some changes and the list of changed files is shown in the Cloud Storage Sync section.

Pay attention that you may need to re-authorize to Dropbox in the settings page to switch notifications on.

Custom file version names

Sometimes it is not easy to identify file version that you need by its timestamp, especially when editing actively. Now you can replace timestamps with custom mnemonic names. Just select a file version in File History dialog and click in the timestamp text field.

Papeeria News, June 10: edit history player

We can now replay the sequence of edits between two file versions. Just open File Edit History dialog and select some version in the list. If there are any edits between the selected version and subsequent one, you'll see "Play edits" button in the top-right corner of the dialog. You can replay edits one by one and see edits made by you or your collaborators. Inserts are highlighted with green, deletes are marked with red.

See how it works in this video:

Papeeria News, May 6: Meet Google Drive Sync!

Google Drive Sync is now available in addition to Dropbox Sync on paid accounts. Together they are now called "Cloud Storage Sync" in our Version Control pane.

Sync works the same way for both services: one can export the whole project to cloud storage and import it back. Exported projects appear as sub-folders under a folder named Papeeria on Google Drive and Apps/Papeeria on Dropbox.

Read the details on Papeeria Docs pages

Papeeria News, Apr 17: meet File Edit History

We just have launched a new version control option. File Edit History which is built into Papeeria allows for listing, viewing and reverting to file versions produced hours or days ago.

This feature is enabled on all accounts and is available from Version Control pane.

In the process of file editing, we save new versions from time to time and saved versions become available in the history dialog. From the dialog, one can preview past versions and replace the live file with the contents of the selected version.

This also works for removed files, so you can now quickly recover a file if it was removed by accident.

The maximum age of versions in the edit history is limited with 24 hours on the free plan Epsilon and with 30 days on premium plan Delta.

Papeeria News, Jan 23: Dropbox Sync

We have launched Dropbox Sync feature which allows for exporting Papeeria projects to Dropbox folders and importing them back. Connect your Dropbox with Papeeria account in the settings and then export projects from Version Control pane.

Dropbox Sync is available to all users who are subscribed to premium plan Delta. You may want to read more about some subtle details in the docs.

Papeeria News, Aug 31: spell-checker updates

TL;DR: hit   Alt+Enter  on word with spelling error to get the list of spelling corrections

Spelling corrections and project dictionaries

We have added spelling corrections and project dictionaries to our spell-checker. Now if you position cursor on a highlighted word and hit  Alt+Enter , you will get a list of corrections.

The list of spelling corrections

Besides, if some word is not known to spell-checker, you can add it to whitelist. Vice-versa, if you see that some word is not highlighted as spelling error, you can add it to blacklist. Both whitelist and blacklist dictionaries are defined on the project level and are available to all collaborators in a single project.

Papeeria News, Aug 3: Auto-Compiling

TL;DR: paid projects can now be compiled automatically in the background

Auto-Compiling

Now you don't have to click "Compile" or hit Ctrl+F9 that often. Compile your project the first time, and Auto-Compiler will continue compiling it for you.

In the user interface Auto-Compiler appears as a robot icon in Compile button. If it is black and moving back and forth then it means that someone, probably you, is typing text in the currently open project. Once typing becomes idle, the robot start compiling it.

Auto-Compiler Robot icon in the Compile button

Read more in Auto-Compiler docs.

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Auto-Compiling is available to all users working in paid projects. Upgrade to Delta to benefit from Auto-Compiling in all your projects.

Papeeria News, Mar 21: integration with Mendeley

TL;DR: paid plan subscribers can now pull their bibliography from Mendeley into Papeeria project.

Biblio pane

You can now access bibliography files in the new Biblio pane. It shows a filtered project tree with only bib files and provides a Big Red Button to create or import new bibliography.

Integration with Mendeley

If you're using Mendeley for managing bibliography records, you can now import the references into bibtex file in Papeeria and keep it synced afterwards. This premium feature is available to paying users subscribed to plan Delta

Connect Papeeria with Mendeley in the settings pane

Import references from Mendeley into Papeeria using New Biblio button in the Biblio pane. Currently we pull all available references and write them all into one BibTeX file.

Sync references from time to time in the same Bibliography Files dialog

Papeeria News, Nov 18: updated Plot Builder

TL;DR: edit plot data and styles in a convenient table interface; use Plotly or Gnuplot to build plots

Updated Plot UI

We have upgraded the user interface of our Plot Builder. The builder has been somewhat hidden until today; now it goes much more visible with rich UI for editing data files and for tuning plot appearance. Check out the new "Table" tab in the editor when you open csv files!

All plots from the project are easily accessible from the new Plots pane. You can scan through the produced images, open Plot Builder from the Plots pane or create new plot files. 

Plot Builder UI, Plots Pane and Viewer pane showing the compiled plot

Integration with Plotly

In addition to Gnuplot engine, those who are registered on great Plotly service can now use Plotly to build plots. Switch between Gnuplot and Plotly using "Build Plot" dropdown in the Plot Table UI.

Saving generated files to the project

Last, but not least: you can now save any file which appears in the preview pane into the project. Plots are saved automatically, and if you want to save a PDF with the compiled paper, you can do it with "Save" dropdown in the Viewer pane.

More docs are available on Papeeria Documentation pages.

Papeeria News, Nov 7: lualatex and bugfixes

TL;DR: you can now use LuaTeX engine

LuaTeX

LuaTeX is a TeX compiler which is capable of running Lua scripts in TeX documents. It might be handy in some use cases, e.g. for automated layout of trees or for building plots. Check out this project to see a couple of examples.

You can choose LuaLaTeX engine in the project settings or in the Compile dropdown. It is supported in both TeXLive 2015 and TeXLive 2016 distros.

Bugfixes

We have made autocomplete less obtrusive and fixed a few bugs. We also significantly improved typing Japanese using standard input methods in Microsoft Windows and Mac OSX. 

Papeeria News, Oct 17: references completion

TL;DR: autocompletion suggests labels and bibliography references

LaTeX is very good at  referencing document elements and citing bilibography. If you want to reference a figure in your text, you just put \label tag in the figure and use \ref command to reference it. If you need to reference a biliography record, you use \cite command. Both \ref and \cite format a reference using chosen style,so that "see the results of comparison with Other Product \cite{competitors} in the table \ref{competitor-analysis}" converts to "see the results of comparison with Other Product [3] in the table 2".

Unfortunately it is easy to forget the id of a referenced element, and when  you need to type it in the \cite tag, you often would open a bibliography file to recall what id did you assign to a paper.

Papeeria will help you a little bit by suggesting the list of labels and bibliography records in autocompletion popup. They should show up automatically when cursor enters \ref or \cite tag, provided that the project has been previously compiled. We extract labels and bibliography records from the artifacts produced by TeX compiler so we need at least one compile cycle.

Papeeria News, Oct 3: instant preview of the math formulae

TL;DR: Papeeria shows math formula previews

LaTeX excels at typesetting maths. However, if you make a typo or mistake in non-trivial math equation you get no immediate feedback and have to recompile the document to see if firmula looks good. Papeeria provides live preview of mathematics so you can see how the equation looks like without recompiling the document.

Formula preview shows up at the bottom of the text editor automatically when cursor enters math mode which is either delimited with single or double-dollar symbols, or inside equation environment. If cursor is already at the bottom of the editor, the preview moves to the top edge.

Matrix in the formula preview

Under the hood we use great KaTeX library developed by folks from Khan Academy, so the supported macros are restricted to the subset supported by KaTeX. The subset is prettywide, so chances are that your equations will look fine. KaTeX paints unknown tags with red color, so even if there is something which it can't render, you will still see partial result mixed with unrecognized tags.

Papeeria News, Sep 10: live autocompletion with snippets

TL;DR: autocompletion now suggests TeX environments and math macros; live autocompletion is turned on by default.

Autocompletion worked in Papeeria since the very early days, however user had to trigger it manually by hitting Ctrl+Space. Besides, it was very basic and suggested words from the opened file as completions.

Today  we updated autocompletion. Now it suggests the most important environments and macros, such as lists and sections. When cursor enters display maths, autocompletion also suggests math macros, from greek letters to sums and integrals.

Autocompletion is now live and doesn't require explicit Ctrl+Space keystroke from user. If you're not the fan of live completion, you can switch it off in the editor settings panel.

Autocompletion popup inside equation suggesting completions for \s

Useful hint for those who want to be autocompletion ninja: Tab key is your friend. It applies the selected completion (just like Enter) and moves cursor between the arguments if there are any in the chosen snippet. Snippet for \sum on the picture above has three arguments, and you can fill in them quickly using Tab key.

Papeeria News: tuning spellchecker and autocompletion

If you need to use different spellchecker language for some particular files, you can override this setting per-file.

Spell check with English language globally and Russian in the current file

If you like live word completion or autoinsertion of closing brackets when you type opening one, you can switch them on in the Autocompletion options

Switching on Live autocompletion

Papeeria News, Aug 9: Bracket Matcher

TL;DR: use Ctrl+Chift+9 to highlight matching and non-matching brackets closest to the cursor position.

Missing bracket might be a real nightmare when editing LaTeX documents. Should you miss one curly bracket, and your document is not compiling and you see something like this in the logs:

Runaway argument?
{\emph {itemnum} that makes little sense when hyphenated across lines\ETC.
! File ended while scanning use of \mbox.
<inserted text> 
                \par 
<*> main.tex
            
I suspect you have forgotten a `}', causing me
to read past where you wanted me to stop.
I'll try to recover; but if the error is serious,
you'd better type `E' or `X' now and fix your file.

! Emergency stop.
<*> main.tex
            
*** (job aborted, no legal \end found)

It is not easy to spot the place where missing bracket is supposed to be, despite that TeX tries to give you a clue. Now in Papeeria you can use Bracket Matcher tool which will make your life easier.

Hit  Ctrl+Shift+9  (Cmd+Shift+9 on Mac) to switch Bracket Matcher mode on. When running, Bracket Matcher searches for the closest pair of matching brackets around the cursor. If it finds such pair, it highlights the region between them with light blue color.

Bracket Matcher highlighting matching curly brackets around cursor

However, if it finds a mismatch, e.g. because there is an opening bracket and no corresponding closing bracket or if opening and closing brackets are different (have you ever mistyped square bracket  ]  instead of curly bracket  }  ?), it highlights the region with rose color. 

Bracket Matcher highlighting mismatched region

Bracket Matcher rebuilds the highlight as cursor moves, so you can quickly find where exactly you missed the bracket. You can switch Bracket Matcher off using the same shortcut  Ctrl+Shift+9  

Thanks to our summer intern Mikhail Pochatkin who contributed a lot of energy into the development of this feature!

Papeeria News, Jul 30: new PDF viewer

TL;DR: new PDF viewer keeps viewport position and scaling

There have been two PDF viewer options in Papeeria: one can view PDF files with "native" viewer or with Google Docs viewer. They work great, but suffer from a major drawback: they are "black boxes" to our web app and are not controllable through the API. We cannot set zooming scale or scroll to some specific region, we don't know which page user is looking at. All that we can do with our viewers is to open some concrete page after loading, and we do our best to find out what page corresponds to the cursor in the editor, so that after recompilation the viewer showed something more meaningful than just the first page.

Our new viewer is based on Mozilla's PDF.JS library. This library is also used in "native" viewer in Firefox, and our viewer is essentially the same base library with a different UI. PDF.JS library has an API, and it allows us to preserve the viewport after recompilation. If you opened some page in your document, zoomed to 400% scale, scrolled to some particular region on the page and recompiled the document, you will see exactly the same region of the same page at the same zooming scale after recompilation, provided that you document compiles fine of course. This is especially handy when you're working on small details in a big math formula or in a complex table.

You can switch between all three viewers with a dropdown in the panel above the viewer pane.

PDF.JS viewer showing a page at 400% scaling scrolled to some math formula
Sliding navigation bar and viewer switcher are visible in the top part.

PDF.JS viewer is currently in beta, with the plan to promote it to default viewer when we finish working on a few missing features:

• There is no continuous scroll. You can use a navigation bar which slides from the top side of the viewer to navigate through the pages or mouse wheel/touchpad if page has no scrollbars.
• There is no sync between editor and PDF viewer.
• Keyboard is not yet supported

Papeeria News, June 9: TeX Live 2016

TL;DR: you can optionally use TeX Live 2016 to compile your projects

TeX Live 2016 which was officially released a few days ago is now available as an option in Papeeria. You can opt-in into using TeX Live 2016 by choosing it in the Compile dropdown or in the project settings on your Dashboard page.

We're going to keep TeX Live 2015 as the default distro for a while, but we encourage you to try the new distro right away!

TeX options in the Compile dropdown

TeX options in the dashboard

Papeeria News, Apr 25: easier to join and easier to leave

Immediate joining

If Bob want to invite Alice to collaborate on his project, and Alice is already registered and has verified her email, Bob can just add Alice's email into the list of collaborators. Access will be granted immediately (page refresh may be required for Alice), although Alice will still get a notification email.

Immediate leaving

If Alice no more wants to collaborate in Bob's project, she can select the project in the "Shared Projects" section in the dashboard and leave it using Trash icon in the right pane.