[JohnHammersley]

Thanks for mentioning Overleaf[1] - we started it to help solve a problem we were having collaborating on LaTeX documents with co-authors based in different timezones - it helped avoid the 'multiple copies of the same doc in multiple email threads' issue, amongst other things.

Since we've grown (now at half a million users worldwide), we're now also working to help solve and streamline the submission & publishing process, for many of the same reasons discussed in this article.

Feels like change is finally happening, which as a scientist myself is great to see!

[1] https://www.overleaf.com

[apathy]

Yes, Overleaf is awesome. I feel bad but I stopped paying for the Premium version with git-to-Dropbox syncing because the "stock" version is already so good. We put up a paper on biorXiv recently with Overleaf and two days later sent it off to a journal with minor reformatting. I only use Word for clinical collaborators these days, Overleaf is so, so good.

I still wish you'd support Markdown so that I could ditch Word completely. I hate that fucking program so much. I'd pay for Premium again just to use Markdown. :-)

[JohnHammersley]

Native markdown support is planned -- in the meantime you might like this tweet :)

https://twitter.com/overleaf/status/763395560682364928

and for something more light-hearted, here's a D&D template in LaTeX!

https://twitter.com/overleaf/status/763524947339800576

[apathy]

I saw the D&D template earlier. That was hysterical.

I had not seen the markdown Beamer proof-of-concept. Very cool. Overleaf is the single best thing that has ever happened to my collaborative authorship skills, partly because Google Docs doesn't have a decent equation editor ;-)

[jdleesmiller]

It's also worth noting that markdown in LaTeX is possible: https://www.overleaf.com/latex/examples/using-markdown-in-la...