Comment by vicapow
13 days ago
The deeper I got, the more I realized really supporting the entire LaTeX toolchain in WASM would mean simulating an entire linux distribution :( We wanted to support Beamer, LuaLaTeX, mobile (wasn't working with WASM because of resource limits), etc.
We had been building literally the same thing for the last 8 months along with a great browsing environment over arxiv -- might just have to sunset it
Any plans of having typst integrated anytime soon?
I'm not against typst. I think it's integration would be a lot easier and more straightforward I just don't know if it's really that popular yet in academia.
its not yet, but gaining traction.
The WASM constraints make sense given the resource limits, especially for mobile. If you are moving that compute server-side though I am curious about the unit economics. LaTeX pipelines are surprisingly heavy and I wonder how you manage the margins on that infrastructure at scale.
But what's the point ?
To end up with yet another shitty (because running inside a browser, in particular its interface) web app ?
Why not focus efforts into making a proper program (you know, with IBM menu bars and keyboard shortcuts), but with collaborative tools too ?
You are right in pointing out that the Web browser isn't the most suitable UI paradigm for highly interactive applications like a scientific typesetting system/text editor.
I have occasionally lost a paragraph just by accidental marking a few lines and pressing [Backspace].
But at the moment, there is no better option than Overleaf, and while I encourage you to write what you propose if you can, Overleaf will be the bar that any such system needs to be compared against.
OP is talking about developing an alternative to Overleaf. But they are still trying to do it inside a browser !