[Tex/LaTex] Alternatives to Overleaf (i.e. instant TeX compiling without sign in)

compilingeditorsonlineoverleaf

The best thing about Overleaf V1 was that I could log into it without an account. This made it possible to share things with people who most likely wouldn't be big TEX users and to whom the idea of working in "code" is scary.

Now having a login, any login, is a impediment for this. If I can show them to the result and TEX markup side by side then I have a chance, however small, for them to read it and see that it's not that fancy.

So my question is is there a workable alternative to the new Overleaf? A tool that has no login requirements, so that I can directly link to the source to updating result view, with edit support for casual users coming in the first time. And with no confusing login requirements, not even ones you can circumvent.

Best Answer

Log date April 2019 (ever changing market)

Bigger players once they reach a certain point (success) do not want the headaches associated with random demo users so I will simply mention those currently failing into that category such as Overleaf, Authorea, CoCalc and Datazar. All seem to have a large enough freemium/paying customer base.

There is a separate "Big List" which includes other online products such as Google Docx2LaTeX, Verbosus and similar browser plug-ins that either require installation or handing over personal details for basic entry.

This answer (A "Small" List) is confined to current online with free access editor/compilers without a dependency on any install. Equally to be listed here there must be no mandatory registration e.g. social account for basic entry (although logins are sometimes common for "added" features / packages).

It is the smaller freemium players that are left behind trying to get a better share of the market.

Currently only a few TeX Live without registration landing page editors are still active. My fist test is will they run multiple classes such as including Beamer, without sign in.

1) Main contender, Papeeria (good spellchecking, autocomplete editor with most packages available) https://papeeria.com/ (TeX Live default 2015 but can opt to use 2016)

2) TutorialsPoint have good support for packages such as beamer but less editor features, note heavily biased towards user hitting adverts (CodingGround serving Tex Live 2016) https://www.tutorialspoint.com/online_latex_editor.php

3) uni-halle Very spartan interface but can produce beamer 10 image presentations etc. https://latex.informatik.uni-halle.de/latex-online/latex.php

4) Tex Viewer, Editor (2015+ Version Multiple UTF-8 language formats supports Beamer) https://texviewer.herokuapp.com/

5) TeXonWeb (Jan Prichystal's older 2011 Tex Live. Limited to basic (La)TeX formats but does include Beamer class) https://tex.mendelu.cz/en/

Also Ran

https://latexbase.com/ (Limited number of Main Packages e.g. `beamer.cls' not found however can work in offline mode

Troy Henderson's
http://www.tlhiv.org/ltxpreview/ (more recent limited range of 2017 packages) and MetaPost previewer http://www.tlhiv.org/mppreview/

There is a very up-to-date (LuaTeX, Version 1.10.0 (TeX Live 2019) ConTeXt online compiler at https://live.contextgarden.net/

Hybrids (can switch from simplistic equation editor to Latex syntax) In minimal or full latex mode will require \documentclass{} but may be limited to PNG rather than PDF output

https://www.latex4technics.com/ (older packages may fail, good for simple PNG output) http://sciencesoft.at/latex/?lang=en (can store tex and pdf online for sharing)
http://sciencesoft.at/latex/index?ochem=true&lang=en (specialist OCHEM-LaTeX)

Smaller equation editors (some possibly should be included above ?)

CodeCogs Equation Editor https://www.codecogs.com/latex/eqneditor.php
Interactive LaTeX Editor https://arachnoid.com/latex/

Noteworthy (thanks to @sebastiano) Conversion from Latex to MathML https://www.mathtowebonline.com/

To be continued...

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] What are the steps for compiling Overleaf projects offline and getting consistent results

(Tom from Overleaf Support Team writing.)

Note that to allow offline compilation of Overleaf projects, you shall do the following:

Ensure that there are no errors in your document. By errors, I mean those indicated by the red balloon next to the "Recompile" button. The yellow and blue warnings are fine for this.
Take the contents of the latexmk file (note: it's not latexmk.tex, it's without any file extension) from How does Overleaf compile my project? and put it in the document's folder (it doesn't cause any harm even in Overleaf).
Ensure that you use latexmk -pdf as the compiler in your computer, and not pdflatex or anything else.
I recommend renaming the main file you compile to output.tex.
Preferably use TeXLive 2018. If you don't have it, certainly TL2019 is better than TL2017 or earlier as there were some big changes in input handling between TL2017 and TL2018. Still, watch for issues with recent changes in packages (Google is your friend in this, most incompatibilites have been discovered already by someone else).

After following these steps, you should be able to compile your documents offline.

Overleaf not compiling

There are several errors in your code, resulting that the code is not compilable ... Let's have a look on it:

Do not use geometry, if you use \addtolength{\topmargin}{-55pt} etc. Or the better way: Use geometry with proper options and delete your manual settings with \addtolength{\topmargin}{-55pt} ...
Load packages only once (several packages you loaded twice or more) and respect the order of loading packages as I did in the follwoing MWE. For example I loaded tikz and hyperref last ...
Change your used \cite{макаренко2020анализ} to something like \cite{test}, that means use only ASCII characters for the key of your bib entry.
Do you realy need all that loaded packages? If not delete that one you do not use in your document.

Compiling MWE:

\documentclass[12pt,a4paper,oneside]{book}

\usepackage{enumitem}
\usepackage{longtable}
\usepackage{pifont}% http://ctan.org/pkg/pifont
\newcommand{\cmark}{\ding{51}}%
\newcommand{\xmark}{\ding{55}}%


\renewcommand{\baselinestretch}{1.1}

\newcommand{\MS}{{\large M\raisebox{0.4ex}{\footnotesize S} $\sim$ {{I\hspace*{0.12cm}\raisebox{0.566ex}{S}\hspace*{0.155cm}I}}} - FP \emph{B\'eni Mellal}}
\addtolength{\topmargin}{-55pt}
\addtolength{\evensidemargin}{-40pt}
\addtolength{\oddsidemargin}{-13pt}
\addtolength{\textwidth}{60pt}
\addtolength{\textheight}{90pt}
\addtolength{\footskip}{12pt}
\setlength{\headsep}{25pt} % <========================== \renewcommand{\headsep}{25pt}


\usepackage{makecell}

\usepackage{hhline}
\usepackage{booktabs}
\usepackage{float}
\usepackage{amsfonts, amsmath, amssymb, lmodern, eurosym}
\usepackage{graphicx} % <======================= deleted option [pdftex]
\usepackage[francais]{babel}
\usepackage[normalem]{ulem}
\usepackage{lettrine}

\usepackage{lscape}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}

\usepackage{tabularx}
\usepackage{array}
\usepackage{multirow}
\usepackage[Glenn]{fncychap}
\usepackage[french]{minitoc}
\usepackage[french]{algorithm2e}
\usepackage{listings}
\setcounter{secnumdepth}{5}
\setcounter{tocdepth}{5}
\setcounter{minitocdepth}{5}
\setlength{\mtcindent}{24pt}
\renewcommand{\mtcfont}{\small\rm}
\renewcommand{\mtcSfont}{\small\bf}
\def\contentsname{Table des Mati\`{e}res}

\pagestyle{empty}

\usepackage{fancybox}

\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\usepackage{lastpage}
\renewcommand\headrulewidth{1pt}
\renewcommand\footrulewidth{1pt}
\renewcommand{\headrule}{\color{black}\hrule}
\renewcommand{\footrule}{\color{black}\hrule}

\usepackage{caption}
%\usepackage{geometry} % <==============================================
\usepackage[table, svgnames, xcdraw]{xcolor}

\definecolor{blueumi}{rgb}{0.00,0.48,0.62}

\usepackage{tikz}

\usepackage{hyperref} % Cr�er des liens et des signets
\hypersetup{
  colorlinks=true,             %colorise les liens
  breaklinks=true,             %permet le retour � la ligne dans les liens trop longs
  urlcolor= blue,              %couleur des hyperliens
  linkcolor= blue,             %couleur des liens internes
  citecolor=blue,              %couleur des r�f�rences
% pdftitle={Rapport de stage}, %informations apparaissant dans
% pdfauthor={Anonyme},         %les informations du document
% pdfsubject={Simulation}      %sous Acrobat.
}

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\begin{document}

\chapter{Présentation des methodologies et outils du test de pénétration réseau}
\minitoc
%\minilof
%\minilot
\newpage
\vspace*{1cm}
\vskip1cm

\section*{Introduction}
\subsection{Penetration Testing Execution Standard (PTES)}



\noindent Parmi les points forts en PTES on trouve :
% avantages

\begin{longtable}[c]{ |p{7cm}|p{8cm}| } 

\hline
\multicolumn{1}{|c|}{\cellcolor[HTML]{000000}{\color[HTML]{FFFFFF} \textbf{Avantages}}} & \multicolumn{1}{|c|}{\cellcolor[HTML]{000000}{\color[HTML]{FFFFFF} \textbf{Justification}}} \\
\hline

\endfirsthead

\hline
Offrir le support nécessaire au testeur avant exécution      & PTES définit avec soin toute planification qui doit être définie et donne une description plus pratique des activités à réaliser.   \\ \hline
Modélisation de menaces & PTES est la seule à introduire la modélisation de menaces dans les étapes du test d’intrusion. Cette étape permet au pentester de prioriser les vulnérabilités et du coup attaquer de manière plus sophistiquée.\\ \hline
Fournir des détails techniques & La norme PTES est accompagnée d’un manuel technique qui détail les principaux aspects techniques et précise les outils utilisés.\\ \hline 
\caption{Les avantages de la méthodologie PTES}
\label{tab:avantages ptes}
\end{longtable}
\noindent PTES d'un seul inconvénient majeur \cite{test}:\\ % <=======================
% limites
\begin{longtable}{|p{7cm}|p{8cm}| } 
\hline
\multicolumn{1}{|c|}{\cellcolor[HTML]{000000}{\color[HTML]{FFFFFF} \textbf{Limites}}} & \multicolumn{1}{|c|}{\cellcolor[HTML]{000000}{\color[HTML]{FFFFFF} \textbf{Justification}}} \\
\hline
\endfirsthead
\hline
Evolution technologique & Les détails techniques présentés par PTES deviennent rapidement obsolètes à cause du développement informatique à titre d’exemple la sortie de nouvelles plateformes et logiciels, à cet égard les développeurs n’ont pas toujours le temps de les tenir à jour. \\ \hline
\caption{Les limites de la méthodologie PTES }
\label{tab:limites ptes}
\end{longtable}


\section*{Conclusion}

\end{document}

and its result: