Updates
ScribTeX has been slowly gaining popularity since it went live in January this year and having just past the 1000 user mark, a few problems are beginning to show. ScribTeX has had a very organic birth, starting life as a wiki for displaying LaTeX and slowly being adapted to suit a more personal use. I've learnt a lot about what people want from an online LaTeX editor in the past year, but sadly many of the features I would like to introduce just don't fit very well into the current platform. Thus, ScribTeX is currently undergoing a complete rewrite to provide a better featured, faster and more reliable service. In short, I'm working hard to take ScribTeX from a hobbyist's website to a platform suitable for professional use.
The new feature list below should get you excited about the coming changes!
- Complete access to your files through git. ScribTeX currently uses its own system to store file revisions but there is no way that it could ever hope to compete with the feature set of git. The new version will use git to store files so that it can provide all the exciting git features like branches, merging, patches and tags as well as letting you checkout the repository so that you can work on your files locally.
- Hierarquical folders. Part of using git to store files means that users will be able to have folders within folders, exactly how it should be!
- Download all your files as a zip/tar.gz file. Many users have asked to be able to download entire categories/folders in some archive format and I look forward to finally being able to allow this.
- Simpler file sharing. The current sharing options are far from intuitive and easy to use. The new version will include a far simpler permissions system. The majority of people only want to choose between allowing users to view files and allowing them to modify them and so it will be easy to let users share projects in these two ways.
- Better user account system. A few more features like password resets and a 'remember me' option should help make the ScribTeX experience better.
- Separate LaTeX API. By completely removing the LaTeX compiling code from the main project and presenting as a web API, it makes it easier to add further features like different compilers and output formats. The API will also be presented to the public to hopefully provide another useful service that can be used by other applications. See http://code.google.com/p/common-latex-service-interface/ for more information on this part of the project.
- Much much more. The much simpler new architecture means that I'm already planning how to incorporate a comments/discussion system, further compilers like gnuplot, and much more. Suggestions for nice features are always welcome and will be added to the todo list!
