Website Report
Executive Summary
Nowadays, Cloud computing applies to many areas. ShareLaTeX (https://www.sharelatex.com/) is an online LaTeX editor website which has Cloud computing, and it has some advantages which software does not have. This report will compare the advantages and disadvantages between LaTeX software and the website. Also, this report will analyze this website’s effectiveness and helpfulness; it introduces the structure of and how to use this website. This report includes background and usability on LaTeX, and why this website is the major LaTeX format.
Introduction
This report analyzes the effectiveness of the LaTeX website – ShareLaTeX. This report will compare the advantages of LaTeX to other document editors, and compare the LaTeX software with ShareLaTeX. In addition, this report will also explain why ShareLaTeX can increase users’ efficiency.
Report Topic
Website Analysis
Background
LaTeX
In the 1980s, Leslie Lamport originally wrote LaTeX, and, at that time, a useful, popular, and free documents preparation system was born (Lamport). This software covers many areas, such as mathematics and chemistry. LaTeX is used for scientific documents in almost any form of publishing (“LaTeX – A Document Preparation System”). Also, LaTeX is always useful and helpful for books editing and organizing the format.
Because LaTeX is a free software for everybody and it has the best documents editing system because it has easy coding grammars; it is hard to tell exactly how many people use LaTeX. However, according to the investigation in 2014, 18% of articles publish on internet were written using LaTeX. LaTeX is widely used as a communication tool in various domains; in mathematics and statistics, physics and astronomy, and computer science, 92%, 60%, and 45% articles were written by LaTeX, respectively (Pepe).
ShareLaTeX
ShareLaTeX is an open source online LaTeX editor, https://www.sharelatex.com/, and it supports several people editing the same source file, just like Google Docs. Users can also run the source on their own computer and develop the code online.
Dropbox
Dropbox is a software or website which uses cloud computing makes to backup and access users’ files from anywhere. (Patankar)
GitHub
GitHub is a hosting service websites, and it is a kind of open source where users can upload their own code and look others code.
Cloud Computing
Cloud computing is a kind of Internet computing method to share data and processing resources with other devices on demand (Hassan). It can also achieve data exchanging.
Report Purpose and Significance
Purpose
To analyze ShareLaTeX’s advantages and disadvantages.
To analyze its practicality.
Significance
The efficiency of using this website is high.
This website gives useful and clear template to save time.
Overview of Objectives
To analyze why this website is useful, and why this website can be used instead of LaTeX software.
To explain why this website is easy to use, and why it is saving time and increasing the efficiency.
Methods of Inquiry
This is a website research assignment, and I found the information from the ShareLaTeX and Leslie Lamport webpage. Leslie Lamport is the initial developer of the document preparation system LaTeX. Also, some background information is from other websites through Google.
Report Scope
The effectiveness of the website, and its features.
Organization
This report is organized by an executive summary, introduction, website overview, analysis of features, and conclusion.
In the introduction, this report will introduce some background knowledge of LaTeX software, and gives some background information of the other websites that will be used in this report—comparing LaTeX software and online website.
The website overview will be made up of demographic information and website sections.
In the analysis of features, this report will introduce and compare the advantages and disadvantages of LaTeX software and ShareLaTeX.
Website Overview
Demographic Information
In 2015, ShareLaTeX’s Blog said that they “hit the great milestone of 500,000 users with most of those users having come in the past 12 months alone” (Oswald). In Alberto Pepe’s research, 418,732 articles were written by LaTeX in 2014; when comparing 500,000 with 418,732, half of LaTeX software users are using ShareLaTeX instead of the software (because some users use LaTeX but do not post articles publicly, there should be half as many LaTeX users using ShareLaTeX). In other words, ShareLaTeX is a popular online document editing website.
Website Section
ShareLaTeX enables users to register for an email account, which allows the website to be used on both public and personal computers. Personal account is free, but if users want to edit documents with partners, they have to pay small fees.
After logging in, users will find ShareLaTeX has a clear interface. The menu is on the right side of the window. Users can start a new project on the list, which can be a blank project, example project, upload project, import from GitHub, or a template. This website has ten categories of templates with 607 variations. Users also can build folders, share projects, and delete projects. The blue and white bar on the left indicates the completeness of your profile. Users can simply complete their profile by providing their name, institution, and role. ShareLaTeX can be used with GitHub and Dropbox in sync. Users need to pay for this function for each year; however, this connection with other software makes LaTeX more user-friendly. The top searching function can help users find files more easily. The projects are shown in the middle of the screen according to which column users choose on the left. The information of the projects includes the title, owner, and last modified date and time. On the right corner are the help, projects, and account functions.
After users build a new project, the right side if the screen is the menu of this project. In the middle, there is the place where users can edit the code of the source files, and on the left side are the PDF files which are built by the source files. On the menu, users can choose to download the source code or the PDF file; users can set up font, grammar check, etc. to help them create the perfect PDF files. Also, users can choose to “share” or upload the source code and PDF files to Dropbox and GitHub.
For example, when users open the ShareLaTeX and login in their account, the website looks like Figure 2. If users want to create new LaTeX documents, they would click “New Project” first as shown in Figure 1. Then, the “New Project” list will give users 11 options. If users are masters of this software, they can just click “Blank Project” to create their own templates or documents. If users are beginner or not good at this software, users can use the templates which the website provides to all users whether they have ordinary accounts or not. Users can simply follow the structure and grammar in the templets to create documents which they want to create. This function saves time for the beginner and this is a good chance for beginners to study how to use LaTeX.
Analysis of Features
The Features of LaTeX software
LaTeX is built for leaving document design to document designers, and letting authors focus on the content of the document (“LaTeX – A Document Preparation System”). The software has attractive advantages. First, LaTeX has excellent compatibility because users can insert any packages they want to use, such as font, graph, and language packages. This function makes LaTeX useful in many different areas, such as chemistry, chess, math, and physics.
In addition, LaTeX can increase the efficiency of document editing. Imagining that users want to write a lab report about the chemical relations. If they use Microsoft Word to display chemical relations, users need to use subscript and superscript to show the reagent and product; also, users may go crazy looking for the relation symbols on the computer system or online. However, if users use LaTeX, they can quickly find these symbols in the packages, and only use one character to create the superscript and subscript.
The biggest advantage of LaTeX is that it can create perfect PDF files if the code is correct. Some other document editing softwares, such as Microsoft Word and WPS, may have bugs when they create PDF files if have some image types or strange symbols in the documents. LaTeX solves this problem perfectly because its packages include these kinds of situations, preventing symbols from becoming garbled and the structure of documents from becoming strange, when it creates PDF files. In other words, LaTeX creates PDF files that are comfortable for readers to read if all the coding grammar is correct in the documents.
Nevertheless, LaTeX also has some disadvantages that gets users in trouble. Because the method of using LaTeX is like writing code, it has rigorous grammar for writing. If users have not used LaTeX before, it will take them some time to learn by themselves. Also, for some old computer systems or types of LaTeX, the system may crash and auto-exit, so if users do not save the source files, they will lose data.
The Features of ShareLaTeX
ShareLaTeX not only has the advantages of LaTeX software, but also solves some disadvantages of the software. ShareLaTeX can skip some tiny bugs in the code. For example, there is a rule in using double “$” to write some special symbols. Writing “$\to$” in LaTeX will show “⟶”. The symbol “⟶” has different meanings in different subject; in chemistry, it means the direction of a chemical reaction; in a database system, it determines which elements are put in a schema. If users only use “$\to” in LaTeX software, it tells users there are bugs in the code, but in ShareLaTeX, it still shows “⟶” because the system thinks users forgot to write the ending dollar sign and skips this bug by itself. Also, ShareLaTeX perfectly solves the crash problem. Because it is an online editing websites, if there is an internet connection, it saves the source code immediately and will not auto-exit.
Usability of ShareLaTeX
ShareLaTeX can share the source files through GitHub and Dropbox, and it has quite perfect cloud computing for data switching. This website is better for group work. Also, because it skips some tiny bugs, users will save time on checking non-important bugs. However, also because of this feature, when users want to publish their source files, they must check the coding grammar in the LaTeX software.
In addition, ShareLaTeX has a lot of templates. It is useful for users to choose the format of their work. Sometimes, users get their assignments at the beginning; they may not know of how to do it. ShareLaTeX’s templates can give them good suggestions and ideas on how to begin their assignments. Therefore, ShareLaTeX applies to group workers and beginners.
Conclusion
Today, society has entered the era of a network, and most research, work, project, and research information need to be uploaded through the internet, so Cloud computing is the main internet technology. ShareLaTeX has cloud computing for exchanging data; it solves most shortcomings and has all the advantages of LaTeX software, and it has a lot of templates for users to use for free. Based on these templates and the website’s online tutor document, ShareLaTeX make more efficient users’ assignments. Therefore, this website is effective for beginners and group work projects.
However, ShareLaTeX still has some parts that can be developed to make it more effective. Because this website does not have a function for users to ask questions to online service personnel, beginners using this website may take some time to learn how to use LaTeX. If this website adds this function, it will make the learning time shorter.
Referents List
Gartner Says Cloud Computing Will Be As Influential As E-business". Gartner. Retrieved 2010-08-22.
Hassan, Qusay (2011). "Demystifying Cloud Computing" (PDF). The Journal of Defense Software Engineering (CrossTalk) 2011 (Jan/Feb): 16–21. Retrieved 11 December 2014.
Finely, Klint. “What Exactly Is GitHub Anyway?” Web. 14 July, 2016.
Patankar, Vinay. “Dropbox vs Google Drive – Which Should You Choose?” Web. 14 February, 2016
Lamport, Leslie (1986). LaTeX: A Document Preparation System. Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-201-15790-X. Retrieved 2007-02-02.
Oswald, Henry. “500,000 Users, Long live LaTeX.” Blog. 1 Aug. 2015
Pepe, Alberto. “How many scholarly articles are written in LaTeX?” Web. 2009
“LaTeX – A Document Preparation System.” Web. 3 Apr, 2015.
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