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I have heard rumors that you can compile documents online, and more specifically that Google has a free online compiler, but I have never been able to find any. Is there a way to compile documents online, so that I can write and compile documents even if I don't have a TeX distribution installed on my computer?

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Note the online compiler is not affiliated with google. It simply uses google UI toolkit and google apps hosting platform. – Dima Jul 27 '10 at 3:03
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You mean that you don't carry around a USB with the full TeXLive distribution on it and binaries for all major operating systems? – Andrew Stacey Jul 27 '10 at 7:15
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@Andrew Stacey lol =) I bet you even have it on your smartphone. – Dima Jul 27 '10 at 15:49
I'm new to TeX, but maybe math.stackexchange.com/questions/ask would qualify as a TeX compiler, with preview ability. – T. Webster Sep 3 '12 at 8:10

12 Answers

up vote 45 down vote accepted

The Google-related solution is available here: http://docs.latexlab.org/

Note, however, that the online compiler is not affiliated with Google. It simply uses Google UI toolkit and Google Apps hosting platform. (from Dima)

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up vote 127 down vote

Online compiler with storage and editor features:

Online compiler with basic functionality:

Tiny equation compiler:

Document frame generator:

The other way round:

  • DeTeXify outputs the corresponding LaTeX command code after you've drawn a symbol
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7  
How do you come up with these lists so readily? – Joseph Wright♦ Aug 13 '10 at 14:49
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I've been collecting useful links for a long time and I published such lists on my blog. This list comes from my blog page texblog.net/latex-link-archive/online-compiler with some additions. – Stefan Kottwitz♦ Aug 13 '10 at 15:00
   
Joseph, since you may refer to tex.stackexchange.com/questions/162/… for that list I used my resources article of 2007 texblog.net/pdf/ressourcen.pdf , also posted on matheplanet.com/matheplanet/nuke/html/article.php?sid=1074 , reviewed it and added links found in my blog. – Stefan Kottwitz♦ Aug 13 '10 at 15:07
@StefanKottwitz: You can expand your list: tex.stackexchange.com/questions/54651/… – Marco Daniel May 6 '12 at 18:48
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I've added WriteLaTeX to the list. – Roberto Bonvallet Oct 25 '12 at 19:57
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up vote 19 down vote

ScribTeX is another good choice. You can also checkout the Common LaTeX Service Interface (CLSI) which is one of the underlying technologies of both ScribTeX and LaTeX Lab.

The CLSI provides the underlying infrastructure for exposing a LaTeX compiler to requests from the internet and can be used to build your own custom web-based solution.

Update

ScribTeX uses git internally to store revisions to documents and the site's author is planning to open the service up to allow users to push and pull repositories as soon as he gets the logistics worked out.

Looks like there may finally be a GitHub-like service for LaTeX documents!

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I am disappointed at the account structure of ScribTex. For holding KBs of files, allowing only three projects is quite sad. My thesis proposal, thesis and resume already used up the three projects and I am definitely not paying for more projects for such a basic service. – JoshFinnie Sep 3 '10 at 16:04
up vote 15 down vote

writeLaTeX - writelatex.com

Features:

  • no need to register
  • collaboration possible, by means of sharing the URL
  • documents can be saved, actually everything is saved automatically
  • instant compilation on-the-fly
  • possibility to upload files (pdf, png, sty, tex, bib, etc.) up to 10 MiB
  • syntax highlighting in the included editor

Screenshot:

screenshot

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up vote 14 down vote

The ConTeXtGarden offers a simple ConTeXt online compiler. It currently uses

  • ConTeXt version 2012.05.30 11:26 MkIV
  • ConTeXt version 2012.05.30 11:26 MkII
  • LuaTeX version beta-0.70.1-2012052416 (rev 4277)
  • pdfTeX version 3.1415926-2.4-1.40.13 (TeX Live 2012)

Here is a screenshot:

contextlivenew

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up vote 9 down vote

This web latex application seems the most convenient and appealing to me.

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up vote 4 down vote

I’ve used some of the online compilers, and they’re fine, but occasionally I want to make use of my own TeX installation on my work computer because it has custom packages and settings installed not available with the online compiler. But what to do if I’m not sitting in front of my work computer?

My solution was to set up a SSH server on my work computer, and simply use an SSH client from wherever I am to log in, fire up vim or emacs or other text only text editor to do edits if need be, and/or simply run latex/pdflatex from the commandline through the shell.

Apparently, you can do this with an iPad or similar. (I don't have one.)

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up vote 4 down vote

Amusingly, many of the online previewers given in other answers are vulnerable to maliciously crafted input. I can only think of one fairly-far fetched way this could be a problem for users, but the people running the preview services should think long and hard about what it is they're doing.

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1  
They really should. I considered hosting one for my own personal use, then realised what a wretched, massive security hole it would be and decided against it. – EricR Sep 12 '10 at 0:20
@EricR: could you perhaps elaborate on how to make it safe? or what the problems are? if \write18 is disabled, is it any better? without actually giving malicious code, could you provide some pointers as to what some problematics commands could be? – Yossi Farjoun Nov 29 '10 at 10:31
@Yossi: Sure. Joseph's blog mentions a paper that describes this in some detail. – TH. Nov 30 '10 at 3:48
up vote 3 down vote

Here's another one I found:

http://tools.jcisio.com/tex/eq.html

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up vote 3 down vote

I've blogged about using CLSI (in particular ScribTeX) to compile LaTeX remotely. I wrote a little client in F#, but it's pretty easy to code a CLSI client in any language.

I also show conceptually in that article how to integrate this with a source control repository and a build server.

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up vote 3 down vote

A recent addition to online compilers by Troy Henderson, presented at TUGboat 33:1, 2012 is the LaTeX previewer:

enter image description here

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up vote 0 down vote

Additionally, Verbosus not only allows using LaTeX in the browser. The developers also provide an Android app called VerbTeX and an iPad/iPhone app called iVerbTeX. I guess this is definitely a nice addition to browser-based LaTeX editing.

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