Word processors are ditching equation editors in favour of LaTeX - <AUTHOR> https://go.nature.com/2wRfbCD <comment><USER3> While LaTeX makes a good language for writing maths, I always feel I want to add it is an _awful_ system for accessibility. The PDFs / outputs created by other systems like Microsoft Word are much more accessible.

For blind users, LaTeX Tables come out as an unreadable mess. The large-scale use of Latex to generate PDFs makes academia extremely unfriendly to anyone who needs accessible documents.

<comment><USER4> Editing LaTeX documents is actually far more accessible, since they're all plain text. Every formatting instruction in a LaTex document is just text, while Word and PDF documents have non-text markup like bold, underline, italic, etc, which is WYSIWYG (with the emphasis being on "see" \-- you must be able to see to be aware of the markup).

<comment><USER5> Last time i edited some latex document, i ended up in dependancy hell with diffrent packages excluding one another or distorting the results of elements used by other packages. Has that become better?

<comment><USER6> I have run into that problem, but only when merging Latex documents with different packages. If you find something that's really difficult and requires a lot of packages, ask why other users haven't made it easy already - <USER2> it's not a good design.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> LaTeX should be regarded as a legacy technology, _not_ the future.

It's useful because it's a standardized language everyone knows and can be applied across the web, e.g. on many StackExchange sites (at least the TeX subset via MathJax), but it's too limited to be held up as a standard to move toward.

For a discussion of some of its limitations and things that can be improved: [The LATEX3 Project][1] (1999).

Personally, though, my main criticism of LaTeX is that its logic is static and based in plaintext. The future is in interactive documents (e.g., in the direction of [Wolfram's][2]), not statically compiling plaintext to image-like documents.

Of course, credit to where credit is due: LaTeX was a hugely powerful tool that's done a lot of good in the world. It also continues to be useful for many purposes, especially due to its widescale adoption from this bright history. It's a great page for the history books -- but, it's not the future.

[1]: [https://www.latex- project.org/help/documentation/ltx3info.pd...](https://www.latex- project.org/help/documentation/ltx3info.pdf)

[2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computable_Document_Format](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computable_Document_Format)

<comment><USER8> Agreed. The future is more within Juøyter Notebooks being shared.

<comment><USER9> You mean like cdrom replaced books? Anyhow, i usually put my math in as latex in my notebooks.

<comment><USER8> Don't know what you mean buddy. But have a look at Jupyter Notebooks

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Reducing LaTeX to the look of the equations it produces clearly misses the point. I use LaTeX because it just formats everything correctly. Inserting figures or tables in word can be one of the most frustrating tasks I can do. Every little change can potentially break the format. Have you ever tried to add a table in word in a double column document? It is madness. The caption system for figures and tables is a joke, too.

With LaTeX your references get updated when you add new figures or tables without having to think about it. The same holds for the references. The formatting of sections and titles is kept (the only way to change the format is that you really want to).

In the Word-templates for papers of conferences there are always so many rules about the formatting. Most of the people never satisfies all those rules, even if they started with the template. I blame word for that, because there is no way to enforce a template (take care of the references, captions, etc.). The last year I just stopped sending word documents to the conferences I go, and instead created an equivalent latex template for them (one of them got even officially accepted). I prefer to invest a few days in making a good LaTeX template than loosing much more days fighting against the Word-nonsense.

It is true that LaTeX requires some time to learn, but it definitely compensates for the time you can loose using word.

<comment><USER11> > It is true that LaTeX requires some time to learn, but it definitely > compensates for the time you can loose using word.

Yes but with LaTeX (or anything else that requires signifcant time to learn) you have to make a noticeable investment of your time upfront. If you already use and know Word you may be aware of its shortcomings but it can still be difficult to justify spending the time required to learning something else.

Especially because while you know that your current system (in this case Word) is annoying, you also know that it works. In the sense that you are able to produce whatever it is that you are using it for. Even though you might also recognize that the result could be better.

With switching to anything new, you don't know

\- How much time it will take for you to learn it and become effective in using it.

\- If it will solve the problems that what you are currently using has.

\- That it won't have other problems instead.

And I think to a lot of people the perceived risk outweighs the potential gain. Especially for people who are working a full time job, have a family etc.

Furthermore, a Word document can be edited by "anyone". If you collaborate with someone else on something, switching to LaTeX means that either they have to learn it too, or they will have to tell you what changes to make and then you must do the editing.

Also, not every document is worth typing out in LaTeX.

I used LaTeX for a couple of years. It has some benefits but I rarely use it myself any longer. Most of my documents I write in Google Docs or in Markdown. Sometimes I use Markdown with a sprinkle of LaTeX and run it through pandoc to produce a pretty PDF with some formulas without having to use almost any LaTeX at all except for in a few select places in the document. For some documents I use Adobe InDesign.

Even one of my best friends who used to be a hardcore proponent of using LaTeX for everything I don't think he's using it that much any longer. Not to the extent he used to back when we were in the university.

In summary, the time cost is a hard sell and it's not given that the time spent learning it will actually be worth it.

<comment><USER12> I have the exact opposite experience with LaTeX. Looking at a few example documents and trying them out will get nearly anyone started on writing LaTeX documents. For very sophisticated effects (tables, complicated graphics that interacts with the text in a nontrivial way, etc) the time investment is much more substantial but those same effects are just as difficult (if not impossible) to achieve with Word or other WYSIWYG editors. Automatic referencing, bibliography maintenance are quite unique to LaTeX and are easy to use. Tables may be hard but some specialized tools (like Lyx) might help.

Word documents can be edited by people who have access to an appropriate version of Word (I do not, admittedly by choice) but the documents themselves are binary (ok, xml) mess, whereas LaTeX ones are greppable, searcheable, etc. They also 'age' much better. I can still LaTeX most documents from 20 years ago (sometimes with minor changes).

As a disclaimer, I am one of those people who uses (La)TeX for everything. I know TeX intimately to the point that I messed with the source code several times and wrote tens of thousands of TeX macros (this is not an exaggeration). I may be biased but I still feel that learning LaTeX is well worth the modest effort it takes to start writing LaTeX documents. And the typesetting TeX is capable of is still unsurpassed.

<comment><USER13> As a fellow frequent tex user, I'm curious at the macros you've written. I've found that I've written very few. I believe it is literally one for multi line commenting, breaking up slides in beamer (like 2x2, 3x2, whatever), and dumb things like section titles for homeworks. Do you have anything that you find particularly useful?

<comment><USER12> I have written a lot of style files (in plain TeX, I am actually a quite passive LaTeX user) for things like handouts and tests I use in my teaching, including my side job as a flight instructor. Some specialized typesetting tasks, like multicolumn dictionary typesetting (was another side project) took a lot of macro writing, as well. I have also written a number of parsers in TeX for pretty-printing code (I use another great Knuth's invention, literate programming, quite a bit). I am addicted to TeX, I can see it now :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _So is LaTeX worth mastering? It depends on the researcher: how often do you use equations, how much is fine-grained control do you need over a document, and how much time do you have to devote to learning a new language?_

But I use LaTeX mainly because the resulting documents simply look better, and I imagine that's a major selling point for many.

<comment><USER15> > But I use LaTeX mainly because the resulting documents simply look better, > and I imagine that's a major selling point for many.

I've encountered a real rabbit hole here, and I'm not sure what to do about it. The naive view is that LaTeX does typesetting the best way. If you want better typesetting, use LaTeX, and if you're using LaTeX, you're done.

This turns out not to be true, which is upsetting to those of us ingrained in the LaTeX ecosystem and used to thinking of it as the best way. The first thing you're likely to learn is that you need the microtype package. Without this package, kerning is not as good as it could be. (Which raises the question - if LaTeX is the final form of a typesetting language, why not do it right by default?)

But the problems don't end there. Modern OTF / TTF fonts have a lot of typesetting information that isn't fully retained if you convert the fonts to use with LaTeX. So if you want modern font support, you can't use LaTeX at all, you switch to XeTeX!

At this point you realize that the microtype package you previously learned was crucial isn't compatible with XeTeX, so you can't use it.

So it's a Catch-22. LaTeX is for people who are obsessed with perfect typesetting. But perfect typesetting can't be achieved (currently, to the best of my knowledge) in any TeX family language.

<comment><USER16> LuaTeX seems to be the best for overall typesetting quality. You can get proper rendering of modern fonts.

IMO the underlying issue is that TeX can't really be parsed by anything other than Tex because it's too full of macros that change the language. I think a better language would generate a well-defined AST, and different tools could compete to render it well.

<comment><USER15> What makes LuaTeX better than XeTeX, as far as typography is concerned?

<comment><USER17> Much better microtype support

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> LaTeX is one of the most important tools that I properly started using regularly whilst at unviersity.

It's _the_ typesetting tool in CS, and you can get some really beautiful results from it. There's great tooling for IDEs like IntelliJ ([https://github.com/Ruben-Sten/TeXiFy-IDEA](https://github.com/Ruben- Sten/TeXiFy-IDEA)), it makes managing references (using BibTeX) much less of a chore, there are tons of high-quality packages that do pretty much anything you could think of and there's an excellent community on e.g. TeX.SE to provide support. It's free software, the results are better than Word and it's much less painful to use than an unpredictable WYSIWYG editor.

I've used it in industry to write security audit reports and more recently as part of my dissertation. My only regret is not discovering LaTeX earlier and using it more.

</comment><comment><USER19> When I saw this headline, I feel really sorry for those millions of non- programmer users. Having used LaTeX for more 10 yrs, I have to say this is one of the _worst_ software in existent. The whole thing is really just a programming language with so many bugs so many broken packages so many idiosyncractic "features" that no one knows why they are the way they are.

Sadly, I still use it because there's no alternative.

<comment><USER20> I'm really surprised not enough people are making this point.

So bug prone, so many fragile packages, so many weird incantations that must be done if you ever want any flexibility... it absolutely sucks, but then I use it again and again.

<comment><USER21> PDF document typesetting is the poster child of unsexy software to work on. Everybody wants a replacement but nobody wants to write one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> _Allington often uses Markdown, which he describes as more "lightweight" than LaTeX, because the formatting commands are more straightforward. [...] That said, some journals and conferences don't accept documents in Markdown format._

Having used LaTeX a lot since I started studying, I nowadays also prefer Markdown because LaTeX often feels like an overkill. There are many great Markdown Editors out there for quick note taking. And when things get more academic, I like to use VSCode with PandocCiter ([https://github.com/notZaki/PandocCiter](https://github.com/notZaki/PandocCiter)) to manage the sources. Also, it's easy to convert the Markdown docs to LaTeX or Word if needed.

<comment><USER23> LaTeX feels ultimately like the wrong level of control. I'd either rather be simpler (Markdown) or have more control (CoNTeXt)

CoNText, for those unfamiliar, is a bit more modern...built to really take advantage of PDF features like full color and hyperlinks that LaTeX isn't as good at. Also much better control over figure placement, and is capable of things like sidebars that are somewhere between very fiddly to impossible in LaTeX.

<comment><USER24> ConText looks pretty good, but the formulas seem rather verbose with

        \placeformula[eqn:famous-emc]
        \startformula
             E = mc^2
        \stopformula

Compared to the quick an dirty latex:

        /[
            E = mc^2
        /]

Granted, with references in latex you'd need something pretty similar

        \begin{equation}\ref{eqn:famoues-emc}
             E = mc^2
        \end{equation}

I must say that the \begin{env} and \end{env} feel better to me that \startenv and \stopenv. Simply because it differentiates the environment name better.

<comment><USER23> Math isn't really it's strong point - but imagine typesetting something like a textbook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> 18 years ago I was submitting a proof I wrote in word as an undergrad for my Econ grad school application. My dad (engineering prof) saw it, and said: "here's what I do when I get asked to referee a paper in word." And he threw it away. He rewrote the proof in Latex and I'm still using that doc as the skeleton for all my work 18 years later.

Like him, I cry myself to sleep at night for not being awesome enough to use TeX, but instead using the layman TeX, Latex.

<comment><USER26> Pro tip: Write in Word but use the LaTeX font. You get the speed of Word and the virtue signaling of LaTeX. Win Win.

This is just tongue in cheek, of course.

I wrote my thesis in 1993, and in that time period, my anecdotal observation was that the students who used LaTeX generally took longer to finish.

Today, I use MathJax inside of markdown, and don't even use word processing very much. Industry has gotten less formal. Most text is edited in an e-mail editor with screen shots pasted in. The main use of word processing is documents that nobody will ever read, such as functional procedures and HR proclamations.

<comment><USER27> What industry are you talking about? Email doesn't scale to the size of a detailed report; I've been criticised for sending 'wall of text' emails that were barely over 1,000 words. I'm sure you weren't entirely serious, but if 'nobody ever reads' documents longer than this, that is concerning.

<comment><USER26> I work in industry, and am amazed by the decline in use of things like detailed reports. Nobody reads any more. Someone might produce an in depth study of something, and present a summary as a PowerPoint, but that becomes the only documentary output of the work. If someone needs to know more detail, they go and ask the person. If the person get run over a bus, the knowledge is lost.

Even before this trend, there was a lot of documentation that was never intended to be read. Huge piles of what I call "ornamental" documentation, e.g., in fulfillment of ISO-9000 or other regulatory obligations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> My biggest issue with (la)tex is how hard it is to find up to date best practices. There are fifty ways to accomplish your desired outcome but it seems like every blog post or stack exchange answer conflicts with everything else and it turns out half of what you're doing is deprecated.

I'd pay good money for a "modern idiomatic latex"-type of tutorial.

<comment><USER29> As a frequent LaTeX editor (professional mathematician) -- what are you attempting to accomplish? And what do you mean by a "best practice"?

My usual operandi is: poke around or Google for a solution, until I figure out one of the fifty ways that achieves my desired outcome. I then declare my problem solved. If my solution is deprecated (by whom?), then whoever deprecated it may tsk-tsk to their heart's content.

Most mathematicians I know are not all that fussy with how they write their LaTeX documents, the same way programmers can be extremely fussy with their code. If there are "best practices" out there, then they aren't widely known or followed.

That said, here's something that may interest you. On the arXiv (arxiv.org), at least in math and probably in other disciplines as well, the LaTeX code is available for nearly any paper you want. Pick your favorite paper, and then click "Download other formats" on the right.

If nothing else, you can see what professional researchers are using in practice.

<comment><USER28> >As a frequent LaTeX editor (professional mathematician) -- what are you attempting to accomplish? And what do you mean by a "best practice"?

Well in the simplest case how about something like \bf versus \bfseries versus \textbf?

Google that and you'll find thousands of blog posts, each telling you which is the One True Way™ but not expanding on the _why_.

Finding actual answers is really hard for latex.

<comment><USER29> > Well in the simplest case how about something like \bf versus \bfseries > versus \textbf?

Use any of them.

> thousands of blog posts, each telling you which is the One True Way™

When I don't know how to do something in LaTeX, here is my flowchart for figuring out how:

1\. Google

2\. Look at any of the thousands of blog posts

3\. Try the proposed solution, while ignoring any "One True Way" crap

4\. Are the results what I wanted? If yes then done; if no go to Step 1.

<comment><USER30> That sounds like a recipe for mysterious breakages and subtle inconsistencies. And most importantly you can never develop a feel for the language if there are no clear idiomatic ways to solve some problems. There needn't be one true way, but there has to be some consistency.

<comment><USER29> I would say this is true of a programming language, but not really of LaTeX.

Now LaTeX technically is a programming language, it's Turing complete. But in practice for most users it's not.

Sure, there might be subtle inconsistencies. There might be some bit of mathematical notation that looks slightly different in one part of your document than another. I guess some people would be bothered by this, I'm not one of them.

It is true that it's possible to become a LaTeX power user, and write all sorts of sophisticated macros. In that case, yeah, you want to get the foundations right. But if you're just doing something simple (e.g. writing up a math paper), then mysterious breakages aren't an issue; there's not really anything to break.

When I worked as a programmer in industry, I was quite anal retentive about how I coded, and getting a feel for the languages I used. They were the tools with which I _did_ my work. But LaTeX, for me anyway, is merely the tool with which I _typeset_ my work. An outstanding tool, perfect for the job -- but not one I choose to invest time in mastering.

<comment><USER31> To me, this sounds like a very reasonable approach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I see a few things at work here.

First, over a period of decades, LaTeX's syntax became the lingua franca of nontrivial mathematics in plain text. I regularly emailed quite sophisticated equations to people as part of discussions because you could assume that anyone who could understand the equation understand its LaTeX representation. Given that cultural fact, providing LaTeX as an input syntax for equations is totally normal.

Second, most LaTeX users are not trained in any other typesetting system. This quote from the article is typical:

> "For me, LaTeX is the tool when I want to get the typesetting just so," says > Casey Greene, a bioinformatician at the University of Pennsylvania in > Philadelphia.

I spent a lot of hours typesetting in the family business using Quark Xpress back in the 1990's. I turned in most of my graduate level math homework in LaTeX generated PDFs, because rewriting three page long proofs by hand because you realized you had an error on page one is a pain. Of my two books, I typeset one in LaTeX and one in Adobe InDesign. If I want the typesetting just so, I would use InDesign over LaTeX every time. It's simply a better tool for the job.

The book I did in LaTeX I did because I happened to know that it would fit extraordinarily smoothly in that. It was a long flow of text with a few inline figures and equations and a really disgusting number of references. If I had a comparable reference tracking system in InDesign, I would have absolutely used it instead.

Finally, a lot of writing I'm doing these days is meant to be read on a screen, with all the vagaries of reflowing and unknown screen size that implies. In that situation your best bet is to wrap yourself in a straitjacket. Markdown and pandoc with blocks of raw HTML as needed is where I've landed, not because I love it, but because it's a well supported straitjacket with an easy escape hatch.

</comment><comment><USER33> LaTeX (and many other TeX-based technologies) simply amazing. But it is not enough for better scientific publishing. There was quite an interesting discussion[1] about creating something in between Overleaf[2], ArXiv[3], Git, and Wikipedia, moreover with the ability to do a peer-to-peer review, discussion, and social networking. There are a few implementations, albeit not covering all features, like Authorea[4] and MIT's PubPub[5] (it is the open source[6]). See also GitXiv[7]. See also the Publishing Reform[8] project. Moreover, there is a quite interesting initiative from DARPA, to create the scientific social network of a kind - Polyplexus[9].

[1] [http://blog.jessriedel.com/2015/04/16/beyond-papers- gitwikxi...](http://blog.jessriedel.com/2015/04/16/beyond-papers-gitwikxiv/)

[2] [https://www.overleaf.com/](https://www.overleaf.com/)

[3] [https://arxiv.org/](https://arxiv.org/)

[4] [https://authorea.com/](https://authorea.com/)

[5] [https://www.pubpub.org/](https://www.pubpub.org/)

[6] [https://github.com/pubpub](https://github.com/pubpub)

[7] [https://medium.com/@samim/gitxiv-collaborative-open- computer...](https://medium.com/@samim/gitxiv-collaborative-open-computer- science-e5fea734cd45)

[8] [https://gitlab.com/publishing- reform/discussion](https://gitlab.com/publishing-reform/discussion)

[9] [https://polyplexus.com/](https://polyplexus.com/)

</comment><comment><USER33> Typing with LaTeX within Vim can be as fast (or even faster) than in the Word processors. You can use the power of Vim plugins, concealments, and customized snippets. Most probably the same can be done inside Emacs as well. See the excellent article[1] on how to set up your Vim to follow the mathematics lectures in real time.

[1] [https://castel.dev/post/lecture- notes-1/](https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-1/)

</comment><comment><USER34> LaTeX integration is one of the neat features of Dropbox Paper. I don't know if people think of it as a "word processor" but you can stick a bit of LaTeX in any context by just using the $$ macro.

</comment><comment><USER35> Why do they claim that Word ditched its equation editor? I believe I'm on the latest Word and it certainly still has the editor.

Word's equation editor is hands-down the best WYSIWYG equation editor I ever used. The results are beautiful and if you want a tilde you just type a f*ing tilde instead of spending an hour figuring out which combination of packages and fonts will cause LaTeX to grace you with this standard unicode character.

I guess maybe MS discontinued the old plugin equation editor (which was terrible, agreed), but the built-in one is still there.

</comment><comment><USER36> For my own uses the combinations of markdown and pandoc feels very satisfying.

Pandoc allows me to pick and choose what parts of LaTeX I want to use and I can otherwise write in plain text/markdown.

</comment><comment><USER37> I've used LaTeX for years, written part of a textbook and a whole dissertation in it, and I don't like it.

There are two good parts to the TeX ecosystem in my opinion.

      - Typesetting math formulae. Even Word agrees that it's superior to point-and click for this use case (unlike our Blackboard online learning environment ... *sigh*)
      - Plain-text based. You can use your favourite editor, you can put it in version control, diff it, etc.

But for writing text-based documents such as lecture notes in subjects that are not mathematics, I really don't feel comfortable with the usability. For example,

      - Getting figures, page breaks etc. where I want them.
      - Underlining things is suprisingly hard (and not intuituve).
      - A marco preprocessor that has many of the disadvantages of that in C.
      - Confusing error messages, stuff randomly doesn't build.
      - Package X doesn't work with package Y (unless you include package W with option Z first) type problems.

I would switch in a heartbeat if there were something with the advantages of TeX, but not the disadvantages. It seems to me like neither of LaTeX3, luaTeX or XeTeX has got enough traction to get everyone to switch.

For things less than 50 pages or so, I've actually moved back to word, which if you buy the proper version rather than the 365 one is surprisingly good. I've found that in practice, for things where I care a lot how they look (which is pretty much everything), unless it's very mathematics-heavy I get the job done in just over half the time in Word usually.

</comment><comment><USER38> For anyone looking to use Markdown while reaping the benefits of a typesetting engine, you may find the following series on how to typeset Markdown using ConTeXt of interest:

[https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2019/05/22/typesetting- markdow...](https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2019/05/22/typesetting-markdown- part-1/)

</comment><comment><USER39> > Proponents embrace LaTeX because of the total control it offers for document > layout

Erm. Doesn't a word processor or a specialized publishing software like Adobe InDesign offer more control over document layout? I thought LaTeX sort of takes over the control (which, some would argue, is a good thing, because you can focus on writing instead of formatting your text).

<comment><USER40> For all purposes I would claim LaTeX does take full control, only because the damn thing is so obscure that it takes a very specific mind to fathom how to use it.

I've done desktop publishing, I've done my MSc thesis in LaTeX, I'm a software engineer by profession - but if I would want any _control_ by _myself_ to _any aspect_ of the document I would probably choose some other layout system than LaTeX.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Maybe it's because I did way more plain TeX than LaTeX, but just what is it that everyone finds so difficult about LaTeX?

Is LaTeX itself that much more difficult than plain TeX?

If so then why not just use TeX, the TeXBook is really easy to follow and gives clear examples.

The equations are formatted exactly the same way in both.¹

1: Unless you choose to use some package like amsmath, but why ?)

<comment><USER42> I think writing text and equations in LaTex is very simple. It's not WYSIWYG, but fairly straighforward. Even complex equations are fairly easy to formulate and look great. However as soon as you want to change how something is presented you might be in for a world of pain.

<comment><USER41> > However as soon as you want to change how something is presented you might > be in for a world of pain.

So yeah, don't use LaTeX then use TeX, where you can change things easily because it's not as complicated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> If you run/operate/host an online service which allows rendering user- submitted LaTeX you must care about security.

There are a bunch of sites which take arbitrary input and convert it to PDF - they're often easily exploited, to allow arbitrary files to be read from the server, and commands executed:

           \begin{document}
           \setlength{\parindent}{0cm}{\Huge \Hello}

           \bigskip
           \section*{Execute Commands}
           \immediate\write18{uptime> scriptoutput.tex}
           \immediate\write18{id >> scriptoutput.tex}
           \immediate\write18{ps -ef >> scriptoutput.tex}
           \begin{alltt}
           \input{scriptoutput.tex}
           \end{alltt}

           \bigskip
           \section*{Read Files}
           \begin{alltt}
           \input{/etc/passwd}
           \end{alltt}

</comment><comment><USER44> In Finland the nation wide test in math are now digitalized. Which is good bit neither memorizing latex commands or menu hunting feels as natural as "drawing" by hand. This will inevitably spread, what to do?

</comment><comment><USER45> Interesting there was no mention of MathType, just the indirection of citing Word's Equation Editor which was originally licensed from the maker's of MathType I believe.

You can still order their licensed software which functions like a plug in and is more rich than the default equation editor that was a feature trimmed release of the broader MathType software I believe. [http://www.dessci.com/en/products/mathtype/](http://www.dessci.com/en/products/mathtype/)

</comment><comment><USER46> I think going one-step further and making LaTeX the entire backing structure of a document would be a great idea. Kind of like HTML WYSIWYG designer tools. Would be a boon for interoperability which is probably why it'll never happen.

<comment><USER3> It would be an awful idea.

Latex can't produce HTML, it can't produce EPUBs or any other reflowable document type. It can't produce any document which is accessible to blind people (other than giving them the raw LaTeX file).

Note: You will find various libraries that claim to produce HTML output. I can tell you from experience none of them work, given a random LaTeX paper you download from, say, Arxiv.

<comment><USER47> Pandoc does all that, from LaTeX source (among others).

[https://pandoc.org](https://pandoc.org)

<comment><USER48> Pandoc conversion is another trip down the rabbit hole (latex to markdown:

Error at "input" (line 265, column 1): unexpected '\n'

<comment><USER47> The assertion was that LaTeX cannot generate specific formats. Using Pandoc (NB: Pandoc Is Not Markdown, though it's often used with it), s well as earlier tools, that is in fact quite possible.

Using templates, with quite a level of flexibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> When I was studying math, I enjoyed the challenge of writing LaTeX. It gave me a break from struggling with (e.g.) a real analysis proof to instead think about typography, struggle with syntax, and tweak my document layout.

</comment><comment><USER50> I find LaTeX's math syntax quite bad, e.g. the fact that you have to use \frac instead of just the / operator, \left( instead of just (, and so on.

AsciiMath is much better and actually works as you would expect it to.

<comment><USER51> \left can be a hassle, but the distinction between \frac and / is often quite useful. In inline math something like x/y can be a lot more readable than \frac xy. You might say it should just automatically choose, but often some terms are more important than others and I really want to control which get rendered more compact.

I also don't like how parentheses in asciimath sometimes don't get rendered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Notice that this article is explicitly about formatting equations in LaTeX. Other Word processors, of course, don't actually do any LaTeX, they simply emulate the equation stuff from it.

</comment><comment><USER53> The Web is where I want to read stuff. I find the publishing industry simply curious nowadays.

</comment><comment><USER54> I think Latex is awesome for what it is: a system designed to enable engineers and (beta) scientists to produce printable documents without having to think a lot about making it look good; which is something they tend to be not good at. From having worked with skilled designers, I know I suck at this at least. As soon as you broaden the scope of writing to include e.g. ebooks, websites, and search engines as first class citizens, latex stops being an appropriate solution.

I rarely produce text for the purpose of printing these days but I used to do this a lot when still working as an academic. These days, I read a lot of books in ebook form and I read a lot of articles, blogs, and news in HTML form. Likewise my output seems to be online documentation, social media comments, the occasional blog article, etc.

Pdfs (and their printed output) are a second class citizen in that kind of world. They are harder to machine read, which results in issues with SEO, accessibility, or even simply re-flowing to deal with different screens or output formats. Pdfs are actually only appropriate for sending to a printer. On screen PDF reading is tedious and the UX for that tends to be not great. The whole page metaphor is simply not appropriate because it means setting the size of the output window to some fixed dimensions and hard-coding assumptions about the medium on which it is going to be consumed. It only makes sense if your medium is paper.

My printer is rarely used these days. I've had it for 12 years and I'm only on the second toner cartridge. The awesome thing with laser printers is that they don't dry out. Most of the output is exclusively limited to bureaucratic stuff. Thankfully that's very limited these days. I used to print stuff like boarding passes but these days you just wave the QR code around with your phone.

Engineers have tried to fix latex to produce things other than .ps and later .pdf documents. The results were never that popular. You can do e.g. presentations in latex and people have probably produced websites from latex as well. But lets just say that it's not a great fit for that kind of thing and also not that commonly used that way.

Additionally, the results are typically kind of bland and boring because the people most eager to produce stuff this way tend to have very little interest in e.g. design quality or making things visually interesting. It sort of self selects to people who have neither the skills nor the patience for that kind of thing. I.e. engineers. The same is actually true for the paper output. Yes you can do nice typography with it and some people do, but most people just stick with the bland defaults, which results in a kind of yawn inducing and bland look that instantly jumps out from a page.

What I've learned over the years is that engineers are obsessed with their tools and that mostly the tools don't actually matter. This article makes the simple observation that for mathematical formulas, Latex provides a pretty awesome DSL and that when it comes to doing math in systems other than latex, that DSL is increasingly what people fall back to rather than whichever formula editor comes with word, open office, etc. or alternatives like mathml, matlab, or hand scribbled things in bitmap form, etc. I think it makes sense. I'd probably use it all the time if writing math formulas was a thing in my life. This happens to be not the case for me, so I have had zero exposure to Latex in most of this century. I do a lot of my writing in relatively dumb editors or even an HTML Text area. I seem to use markdown a lot as it is good enough and doesn't lock me in to taking any decisions for the output.

Funny story: when I was in university we had secretaries that knew how to use latex. Reason: several of the elderly math professors had no clue how to use a computer and were used to handing their papers in handwritten form to the secretaries for further processing. It's easy to forget that computers and word-processors are relatively new tools and that people have been publishing scientific work for centuries. Even Latex is not that old. Ultimately it's about the content, not the tools.</comment>


Why Google Should Be Worried About Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://techland.time.com/2012/05/29/why-google-should-be-worried-about-facebook/

<comment><USER2> Sure Facebook could serve contextual ads on other sites/service based on what they know about their users, except it would violate their privacy policy.

"We do not share any of your information with advertisers (unless, of course, you give us permission)."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it would be technically possible for a page to read and report back to the originating server what ad appeared on a page (integrated with js or iframe, etc.). This would violate that clause of the privacy policy.</comment>


HBO exaggerated how dangerous Chernobyl was for most - <AUTHOR> https://business.financialpost.com/opinion/lawrence-solomon-hbo-exaggerated-how-dangerous-chernobyl-was-for-most <comment><USER2> Im not familoar with this news site. Is this satire?

<comment><USER3> Not satire, it's literally called Postmedia.</comment></comment>


Brazil declares emergency after 2,400 babies are born with brain damage - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2015/12/23/brazil-declares-emergency-after-2400-babies-are-born-with-brain-damage-possibly-due-to-mosquito-borne-virus/ <comment><USER2> The sooner we get serious and start to deal with mosquitos the better. We already know what needs to be done [1], now all we need to do is get on with. How many millions of people have to die before we solve the problem of mosquito borne disease once and for all. Are we really going to sit around for decades debating if we should use this technology or not?

Edit. For those who want to understand more about this gene driver approach (it is pretty complex and amazing genetics) this review is the best I have been able to find [2].

1\. [http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nbt.343...](http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nbt.3439.html)

2\. [http://longnow.org/revive/wp- content/uploads/2015/02/Alphey-...](http://longnow.org/revive/wp- content/uploads/2015/02/Alphey-AnnRevEnt-2014-genetic-control-of-mosquitoes- copy.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Focusing on practical approaches seems to yield most beneficial results. I have had very good experiences in tropical climates with window screening, mosquito nets, bio-compatible repellents, traps, zappers, and would like to find more good tools.

<comment><USER2> Not to be harsh did you read the article I linked to? Basically it shows us how we can wipe out all mosquitos for good without any pesticides or on going costs (it is a one-and-done approach). A world with no mosquito borne disease sounds like a pretty good idea to me.

To head off the ecological discussion about using this technology, mosquitos that carry human disease play no important ecological role and if every single one disappeared tomorrow the only consequence would be millions of people would stop dying. Over 700 million people a year get a mosquito borne disease and over a million die [1]. To stop this I would gladly sacrifice every mosquito.

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito- borne_disease](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito-borne_disease)

<comment><USER4> [http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html](http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html)

 _Yet in many cases, scientists acknowledge that the ecological scar left by a missing mosquito would heal quickly as the niche was filled by other organisms. Life would continue as before — or even better. When it comes to the major disease vectors, "it's difficult to see what the downside would be to removal, except for collateral damage", says insect ecologist Steven Juliano, of Illinois State University in Normal._

<comment><USER2> The collateral damage they are talking about here is avoided human misery and death. This is one sort of collateral damage we can happily live with.

<comment><USER5> I think they mean something more along the lines of Dragonflies. They love to eat mosquitoes and their larvae.

Not that we shouldn't do it, I'm sure they can live off knats just as easily.

<comment><USER2> I am pretty sure they were talking about people. From the Nature article

 _" The ecological effect of eliminating harmful mosquitoes is that you have more people. That's the consequence," says Strickman._

<comment><USER6> There's a certain strain of environmentalist that sees deindustrialization, technological regression, and human population decline as the solution to the world's problem. This perspective misses the mark, I think.

<comment><USER7> Human population decline would solve a lot of our environmental problems and is not necessarily tied to technological regression. In many developed countries it happens by itself and it could rather easily be helped along with some financial incentives, say, a tax on children.

<comment><USER6> The last thing we need is a tax on children in societies with sub-replacement fertility. A world without growth is a terrible place. (Before you object: yes, economic growth isn't the same as population growth. But to get economic growth with a declining population, you need productivity to grow faster than the population declines, and we're already having trouble keeping productivity growth up.)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/02/business/economy/imagining...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/02/business/economy/imagining- a-world-without-growth.html)

<comment><USER8> why does productivity need to go up if the population is declining? what about the unemployed?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Maybe it's time to deploy some DDT...

[http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2012/09/silent_spring_turns_50_biographer_william_souder_clears_up_myths_about_rachel_carson_.html)

 _Rachel Carson never called for the banning of pesticides. She made this clear in every public pronouncement, repeated it in an hourlong television documentary about Silent Spring, and even testified to that effect before the U.S. Senate. Carson never denied that there were beneficial uses of pesticides, notably in combatting human diseases transmitted by insects, where she said they had not only been proven effective but were morally "necessary."_

<comment><USER10> > Rachel Carson never called for the banning of pesticides.

It never has been banned for combatting human disease, so I don't see your point. (Except in a few places like the U.S. where several species were going extinct from extreme overuse.)

<comment><USER9> The italics indicate that I was quoting the article. The words you are quoting as mine are actually taken from the article I linked to.

DDT is so effective because it is persistent, unlike pyrethrins which degrade rapidly and need to be frequently resprayed. As a result, it has significant environment side effects and finds its way into the food chain. My only point was that in this case, DDT might be the lesser of two evils.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Brazil is fighting the dengue fever for 20 years now. More than a million people get the disease each year. Every year the public policy is the same: send agents to enter the houses and search for still water. When the same measure fails for 20 years, shouldn't they be thinking of an alternative?

<comment><USER12> This is either the most heartless post I have ever seen on HN, or I am unaware of some great wrong Brazil must be responsible for. Why the negativity toward Brazil?

Edit: Parent has been edited.

<comment><USER11> I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be heartless. I'll edit the comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Brazilian here. Our country is broken, unemployment has never been greater and we have a corrupt government that steals all taxes we pay. Hospitals of Rio de Janeiro and other cities are closed for lack of gloves and masks for the doctors. The situation is really bad here. Our country is great and our people work harder, if the government stop stealing we would not have those problems. The largest company in the country lost R$ 161 billions because of government Dilma Rousseff, government has disapproval of more than 80% of the population and won the election inventing a war between the rich and the poor. I do not know what will happen to children who are with dengue or zika because we dont have hospitals running. The people who were working combating mosquitoes in homes are on strike because they did not received their salaries. Worst of all is that the media does not want to show what is happening here. Excuse my bad english.

<comment><USER14> Brazilian here.

The situation has always been dire. We're just more aware of it now.

In fact I'd argue that it has been much worse in some sectors (remember hyper inflation? That was just less than 30 years ago).

The problem now is the growing pains and the polarization of opinion we're creating. We risk becoming a nation of black-and-white issues like, erm, the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Are there other examples of nations declaring a sudden state of emergency over infectious diseases that pop up like this? There's obviously Ebola, SARS, and MERS but those were all highly infectious and had effects that were nowhere near as subtle as birth and developmental complications (which isn't saying much considering how long tobacco and alcohol's effects were missed/ignored). The CDC, WHO, and many other organizations do a great job of watching out for public health and are shining examples of what societies can achieve, up there with our space programs, but how many such incidents are happening in poorer parts of the world without such infrastructuree? How many are a hop, skip, and an airline ticket away from jumping to the developed world?

 _》 Until a few years ago, human infections with the virus were almost unheard of. Then, for reasons scientists can 't explain but think may have to do with the complicated effects of climate change, it began to pop up in far-flung parts of the world._

Ugh, what? This offhand cmoment seems like nonsense meant to make the article more interesting and relevant. I have no doubt that, through some complicated and convoluted path, climate change can tip the scales jn favor of some virus or even an infectious variant, but this is too interesting and sensationalist a statement to leave unqualified.

<comment><USER16> The abstract of this article from 1996 sheds some light:

"The incidence of mosquito-borne diseases, including malaria, dengue, and viral encephalitides, are among those diseases most sensitive to climate. Climate change would directly affect disease transmission by shifting the vector's geographic range and increasing reproductive and biting rates and by shortening the pathogen incubation period."

[http://jama.jamanetwork.com/mobile/article.aspx?articleid=39...](http://jama.jamanetwork.com/mobile/article.aspx?articleid=394508&resultclick=1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This isn't the first dangerous disease spread by mosquitos, and may not be the last. Not to mention how incredibly annoying they are in general.

I've been to Brazil a number of times, and the thing I could never understand is why, in a tropical country knee-deep in hungry disease causing mosquitos, is there not a single screen on any of the windows there? Big mistake, they're not expensive. They are cheaper and safer than rubbing chemicals into your skin every day.

Here we have screens even in the desert where there are few mosquitos, they still keep out flies and moths, etc.

<comment><USER18> When I lived in Brazil, we had window screens, but it was on an affluent area in the coast of Rio. I'm not sure it made things that much better though. You need a lot of discipline to keep those screens shut all the time when you live in a tropical country and go outside all the time.

We just learned that during the summer, around 7pm, it was time to close doors and windows and turn the A/C on.

<comment><USER19> In England at least you can't easily find them and even if you could your local council would likely not approve the planning permission to install them.

<comment><USER20> In England you don't have malaria or dengue.

But if you did the council would forbid you from doing anything about it, because hey, mosquito borne disease is historic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm yet to see good major news about Brazil this year. So far it's been microcephaly, the economy flirting with depression, corruption scandals and a political crisis. I wonder how are we going to cope with hosting the olympics amid all that

<comment><USER22> The corruption scandals are pretty great news, in that they're being uncovered and prosecuted.

<comment><USER21> What is great news is that they are being prosecuted, but the fact that those scandals happen at all is sad.

I do get your point though, those kinds of scandals have probably been happening for a long time so it is good to finally have some of them uncovered.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Until last week, there was a popular conspirancy linking these increasing cases of brain damage to vaccines.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is worrisome living a stone throw away from South America. Last year was the summer of Chikungunya for us. It would only be a matter of time before this disease moves further north to us.

</comment><comment><USER25> Why does the United States not have issues like these? Or rather, just mosquitoes in some areas in general?

</comment><comment><USER26> I hope we can find a better solution, but if not: sorry birds, DDT works.

</comment><comment><USER27> How are blacks affected?

</comment><comment><USER28> Tit-for-tat?

[https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27844-modified- mosqui...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27844-modified-mosquitoes- begin-blitz-on-dengue-in-brazilian-city/)

We release GM mosquitoes that sabotage development of mosquito newborn, and they transmit virus which sabotages ours?

<comment><USER28> It's an interesting coincidence, not a serious suggestion for those who are downvoting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> "may be the cause"

"may want to hold off"

"may have to do with the complicated effects ..."

They need some definitive answers.

The incidence of microcephaly is 1.02 per 10,000 births in the UK 2002 for microcephaly (University of Ulster, 2003). [ source : [http://www.rightdiagnosis.com/m/microcephaly/prevalence.htm](http://www.rightdiagnosis.com/m/microcephaly/prevalence.htm) ]

Birth rate in Brazil is 14.5 per 1000 births.([https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world- factbook/...](https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world- factbook/rankorder/2054rank.html))

Population of Brazil is 190,000,000. They're claiming 2400 cases in this emergency.

Do the math. (as child threader indicates, it is high)

Finding Zika virus a small number of cases is not a clear answer.

<comment><USER30> You're comparing the number across births in the UK to the number across the total population of Brazil.. There aren't 190M births in Brazil every year but closer to 2.7M (birth rate of ~14/1,000) -- only counting the known cases of microencephaly yields an occurrence of 89/100,000 or about 90x as frequent as in the UK. Seems pretty substantial, no?</comment></comment>


Applying to Ph.D. Programs in Computer Science - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/gradschooltalk.pdf <comment><USER2> I have an undergraduate degree that's completely unrelated to CS and I want to go back to school one day for a master's in CS. Is research experience also necessary for a master's at a good school (like UCs)? Or will industry experience and recommendations for being a good student in CS classes be sufficient? It just seems pretty hard to get research experience without having been a CS major in undergrad. If anyone has any tips on how to approach getting CS research experience post-graduation as an unrelated major I'm all ears!

For the record I've always been a hobbyist programmer and have about 2 years of undergrad CS courses that I took for fun.

<comment><USER3> There's so much more to a CS major than just programming. You should check out the grad program's curriculum to make sure you're doing it for the right reason. Anyway, research experience is not required for most master programs. Industry experience and recommendations from work would work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I came across this when I was applying to programs. I thought it was pretty useful, especially the section on recommendation letters. It helped me decide what professors to ask for recommendations and how to do it.

I also liked the "So long, and thanks for the Ph.D.!" article: <http://www.cs.unc.edu/~azuma/hitch4.html>

</comment><comment><USER5> I wrote a similar article a few years back when I was still in grad school: <http://www.ics.uci.edu/~jcarlson/gradschool.html>

</comment><comment><USER6> > _You will know about your research than anyone at your school._

I think theses should also be held to a high standard of grammar.</comment>


Judge: Bolton can publish book despite efforts to block it - <AUTHOR> https://www.kktv.com/content/news/Judge-Bolton-can-publish-book-despite-efforts-to-block-it-571388881.html <comment><AUTHOR> but.... "Defendant Bolton has gambled with the national security of the United States. He has exposed his country to harm and himself to civil (and potentially criminal) liability," Lamberth wrote. "But these facts do not control the motion before the Court. The government has failed to establish that an injunction will prevent irreparable harm."

<comment><USER2> And the Trump administration has not?

<comment><AUTHOR> Missed the point. Trump was not being sued so the judge didn't decide on Trump. And "X does it too" is not an argument.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What interesting hardware startups are based in London? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for a graduate job at a hardware startup in London. It seems most lists I find only cover design agencies etc.<p>Upverter supposedly has a map, but unfortunately it's down. There's also a Wired article with a map, but that too is down for me. <comment><USER2> If music is your thing then ROLI: [https://www.roli.com/](https://www.roli.com/)

Kano are always impressive: [http://www.kano.me/](http://www.kano.me/)

If children's toys are your thing, MakieLab have very smart people: [https://mymakie.com/](https://mymakie.com/)

Sugru have an awesome team: [https://sugru.com/about](https://sugru.com/about)

Kokoon are doing interesting wearables stuff: [https://kokoon.io/](https://kokoon.io/)

There's also a hardware startup meet-up on next week. Usually attended by a bunch of interesting hardware companies: [http://www.meetup.com/Hardware- Pioneers-by-Hardware-Startup-...](http://www.meetup.com/Hardware-Pioneers-by- Hardware-Startup-IO/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks – I'll check those out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Assuming you've checked [https://angel.co/jobs](https://angel.co/jobs) and [http://workinstartups.com/](http://workinstartups.com/)?

Other than that, I know of converge who're growing last I knew: [http://converge.io/](http://converge.io/)

If Bristol's not too far, then [http://ultrahaptics.com/careers/](http://ultrahaptics.com/careers/) or get in touch with my consultancy - we're doing connected product development: [https://zoetrope.io](https://zoetrope.io)

<comment><AUTHOR> I was fairly adamant that I wanted to stay in London, however I recently visited a friend in Bristol and really enjoyed the city.

What would you say is different about working at a consultancy?</comment></comment>


Neuralink Demo Livestream - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/DVvmgjBL74w <comment><AUTHOR> For anyone else landing on this: it's currently 22 minutes past the published event start time and it still hasn't started. It's not just you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Updated 3:30 PST start time ([https://twitter.com/futurejurvetson/status/12994675672374599...](https://twitter.com/futurejurvetson/status/1299467567237459973)).</comment></comment>


E-waste recycler Eric Lundgren loses appeal on computer restore disks - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2018/04/24/recycling-innovator-eric-lundgren-loses-appeal-on-computer-restore-discs-must-serve-15-month-prison-term/?ICID=ref_fark&noredirect=on&utm_content=link&utm_medium=website&utm_source=fark&utm_term=.ac7d3ca7b803 <comment><AUTHOR> After reading the article I still cannot see the ethical reasonaning for judging his actions and why they are criminalized!</comment>


Ask HN: Change Professional Direction or Not? - <AUTHOR> Hi, I'm 25 years old and I've been working with Android for about 5 years. I noticed that in the last year I completely lost interest in all this Android stuff. It doesn't seem funny anymore to program for Android. I don't learn new technologies, frameworks, libraries, and all these fancy things. I have no interest and inspiration for that.
The reason why I chose Android is in childhood I liked playing with mobile phones, in that time they weren't so smart and there were a lot of ways to hack them, to patch the firmware(especially I liked Sony Ericsson phones), etc. On earlier versions of Android, it all was as well, it was funny to install custom Android builds, play with them, but now it doesn't make sense. Android has everything that regular users need. Community doesn't interested in it anymore. R.I.P. CyanogenMod... :'(
Also, I like the balance in mobile development between UI and some kind of business logic. You can see the result of the written code immediately and can write complex business logic, it looked appealing to me when I started...
Nowadays. In the Android world, everyday appears "fancy" article on Medium, someone creates a new "amazing" library/framework. To be in trend you should read all this stuff because if you don't, you aren't demanded employee, colleagues look weird at you. Regular android applications don't seem challengeable anymore, it has a standard UI, functionality, requirements. The code from project to project looks similar, because of community use one architecture, one approach, the same libraries, etc. In truth, modern android development reminds me of FrontEnd development, especially with Google's JetPack Compose and the last improvements from Google (because before it was awful)...
The full post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestionsEU/comments/hmbuvb/change_professional_direction_or_not/ <comment><USER2> Anybody?</comment>


How to find clients and agencies if you're a nobody in the iOS community? - <AUTHOR>

I have one app on the store, and another that's soon-to-be released, and I'm quite confident in my technical skills but I just don't happen to have a dozen apps on the store. Is this a disadvantage? I don't have very many contacts, the reason being I've been working in a small startup where I only know a handful of people.
I'm considering going to conferences and meeting other developers, but I can't afford the costs without a paying project. I know it takes time and many attempts but are there any other ways I can "put myself out there"?
If anyone is looking for a iOS developer, email me at firstname.lastname@example.com. I might as well get the word out here too.
EDIT - this should be a Ask HN but i can't edit the title. <comment><USER2> i would look for good recruitment agents - there is high demand for ios devs</comment>


Show HN: I wrote an Enigma machine emulator for the Web - <AUTHOR> https://enigma.lh.mk <comment><USER2> This is very clever. But I think you would benefit from testing it with real users. I spend a minute clicking around and nothing seemed to work - then I noticed the low contrast text telling me to configure things.

So I configured them and it still didn't work. Turns out the "lock" setting was now hidden and I had to scroll down.

Once I got that done, it worked very well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the feedback! I should probably work on that... I agree that it's confusing.

<comment><USER3> Agreed on this, played around dragging things around for a couple minutes and still couldn't get it to do anything.

Maybe pre-configure some default settings so it works immediately upon load. Or perhaps a short video showing its use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> d--b Just mentioning this:

[https://observablehq.com/@tmcw/enigma- machine](https://observablehq.com/@tmcw/enigma-machine)

<comment><USER4> Phenomenal! Thank you for this link -- such a lucid demonstration of how it works!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> History/math question: I understand that the wiring in the wheels is such that the electricity is sent through the wheels then looped back through. My question is: were the wheels completely random or did they have to be specifically designed to do that?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't completely understand your question but I will try to answer it.

The wheels were specifically designed to do that. The internal wiring of the wheels was random, but known. For example, every "Rotor I" that exists would have A wired to E, B wired K, C wired to some other letter on the other side etc... But then "Rotor II" would have A pointing to, let's say, M, B to L ..

And yes, they were specifically designed to do that, the whole point of it was for the electrical current to travel randomly and take an unique path throughout the rotors on each key-press.

Check out this more detailed article about the rotor wiring: [https://www.cryptomuseum.com/crypto/enigma/wiring.htm](https://www.cryptomuseum.com/crypto/enigma/wiring.htm)

Not sure if this answers your question. I'd be happy to clear out any confusions if you're more specific. :)

<comment><USER6> I'm probably completely wrong, but the wiring of the rotors makes me vaguely think of S-Boxes in modern algorithms. Not sure if the comparison holds to scrutiny however.

<comment><USER7> Each rotor implements a permutation of its input terminals. So maybe more like a p-box, but the difference is significant (only two wires in use at a any time, and one is in "reverse") so probably just thinking of it as a permutation is better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting easter egg on the main page:

[http://lh.mk](http://lh.mk) \--> _views source_

        <!-- who.lh.mk for the curious ones -->

[http://who.lh.mk](http://who.lh.mk)

</comment><comment><USER9> Good stuff, Drag'n'drop is not working on Firefox btw.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm.. Not sure what is causing your problem. I was testing the software on Firefox (69.0) while writing it and it works just fine. Maybe you're blocking JS or something?

I would appreciate if you could open a more detailed issue on the GitHub repository at: [https://github.com/lubeskih/enigma- emulator](https://github.com/lubeskih/enigma-emulator).

Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is awesome! It's always great to preserve history.

</comment><comment><USER11> Why is there a stript blocking mobile browsers

<comment><AUTHOR> It's just an alert telling you that the emulator is not supported on mobile devices.

<comment><USER12> Why does it take you to google.com instead of the page you came from?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good point. Noted.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Reahl – A Python-only web framework - <AUTHOR> https://www.reahl.org/ <comment><USER2> Quite similar to Plotly Dash, but a worse license. [https://plot.ly/products/dash/](https://plot.ly/products/dash/)

Dash is awesome for early stage , production ready prototyping.

<comment><USER3> With "worse" you mean what exactly? Probably just "not fitting my personal needs and ideas"? That doesn't make something generally worse... or can you tell me how it's bad for me?

<comment><USER4> Companies are usually wary of AGPL. e.g.:

[https://opensource.google.com/docs/using/agpl- policy/](https://opensource.google.com/docs/using/agpl-policy/)

<comment><USER3> That just means "not suited for everyones needs and taste" - tge same goes for another license that a company chose. Others like it less.

<comment><USER4> Exactly. And that's what the comment you replied to said. For them, it was worse for their "needs and taste" but you wanted clarification. Now you're saying the clarification is obvious so I don't know what's your point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It seems to me that html css and JavaScript are better suited for the job than Python, if you want to do anything complex at all. But I'm probably wrong.

<comment><USER6> Speaking as a python developer who uses Javascript and CSS only when necessary, yes, you are correct. It's not the fact that it's JS/CSS that's annoying to me about such work, and nothing about it gets better if you use python instead.

Not that it's not interesting of them to make this, but really, I had little if any temptation to try it out.

Note that it doesn't necessarily mean I think JS/CSS is _better_ suited, but in any case not worse, and I think the leap from one problem domain to another is much more significant than the leap from one language to another.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Other component-oriented frameworks: [http://tapestry.apache.org/component- reference.html](http://tapestry.apache.org/component-reference.html) Java

[https://github.com/jeluard/lucuma](https://github.com/jeluard/lucuma) Clojure

[https://github.com/greencatsoft/scales](https://github.com/greencatsoft/scales) Scala

</comment><comment><USER8> How is this different from Vaadin (other than the language, of course)?

[https://vaadin.com/](https://vaadin.com/)

<comment><USER9> Would also like to know major differences to Anvil?

<comment><USER10> Anvil is hosted, or an on-prem server, whereas it looks like this can be run anywhere. I'd guess that's the major difference.

Anvil also emphasises their dev tools, it's quite an integrated environment, between IDE, data, and deployments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Does APL here mean you can only use it ti build APL-licensed server code?

Apparently it should be the case.

<comment><USER12> AGPL means you have to share any code you write using this framework. It makes no sense to me why a library would be AGPL licensed, LGPL is what I expect libraries to be, of course I'm not sure how the LGPL applies to Python, but I'm usually all in for MIT License.

<comment><USER13> > It makes no sense to me why a library would be AGPL licensed

> AGPL means you have to share any code you write using this framework

I think you've found the reason?

<comment><USER12> But you're using this code in any application you make, so you can't use it commercially.. AGPL isn't made with libraries in mind...

<comment><USER13> > But you're using this code in any application you make, so you can't use it > commercially.

AGPL puts no restrictions on commercial usage, as far as I am aware.

> AGPL isn't made with libraries in mind...

It works perfectly well with libraries.

<comment><USER14> I have always disliked the "GPL doesn't prohibit commercial use" argument. You know well why it isn't practical to use for commercial purposes. You basically make any project using it into an unlimited full featured free trial.

<comment><USER15> > I have always disliked the "GPL doesn't prohibit commercial use" argument. > You know well why it isn't practical to use for commercial purposes. You > basically make any project using it into an unlimited full featured free > trial.

I don't get it. What would be so wrong about making your source code available to everyone (including your competitors)? Remember, if your source code is AGPL and someone uses it, their source code is also AGPL and they must make their changes available to their users.

If you deliver real value to your customers, the fact that your source code is publicly available should be a plus point for your customers.

<comment><USER12> How competitive would Google or Facebook be if all of their code were fully open sourced?

<comment><USER15> I don't know about google or Facebook but I imagine I could argue the secret sauce is configuration which (I anal) I imagine is not something you'd have to release under any GPL. The threat isn't so much that someone will build a competing google as much as I think it is someone will game our system. Just my guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It seems conceptually similar to Google Web Toolkit. So probably it is also a nightmare to debug.

</comment><comment><USER17> Be careful. This is licensed under the AGPL, which basically makes it unusable. Or a commercial license can be purchased.

<comment><USER12> I'm surprised GitHub doesn't show this on the repository it just says "View License" but I guess they don't allow using AGPL when creating a repository.

<comment><USER18> They do support showing AGPL 3.0, but it has to be either in a LICENSE.txt or LICENSE.md. This project just has it in a file called LICENSE. [https://help.github.com/articles/licensing-a- repository/](https://help.github.com/articles/licensing-a-repository/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Needing an ajax request to paginate a table seems like a big step backwards from modern web applications.

<comment><USER10> Am I missing something? Pagination would surely require a request, unless you're loading the full data set into the client up front, which would be a bad idea in many use cases?

<comment><USER19> In this case the request is always needed since the request returns html, not the actual data. In most frameworks (or even custom solutions) you can choose to either load the data up-front or fetch each page on-demand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> At first glance this looks like an interesting take at pulling a lot of the functionality back to the Python side of the web application.

It's not a webassembly framework, and it doesn't seem to go the "thin client" approach of managing DOM changes and events over a two-way protocol.

</comment><comment><USER21> So how does this work? So is this like a templating where instead of writing a template file, you write an app using widgets and element functions that the framework provides and then stitch together an HTML page when requested and send to the browser?

</comment><comment><USER22> I feel bad about projects like these, I really do. I'm sure a lot of effort have been put in and it probably satisfies what OP wants to do. But in the end, no one serious would ever consider using it.

<comment><USER23> >But in the end, no one serious would ever consider using it.

Why not?

I would say it is the other way around. For any web application project of decent size there is almost always a transpilation step that converts whatever programming language your source code is in, into JavaScript (usually ES5). We also had very successful and widely used projects like GWT for years (GWT was first released in 2006!!!).

<comment><USER24> Transpiling to JavaScript is a bug on the web, not a feature. node and npm is a shit show. Having to deal with it a couple days ago. I wish that entire ecosystem would just die.

I can make a sophisticated python web app with 20 packages. Or in JavaScript I'll need a few hundred that have massive vulnerabilities and conflicts. Hell npm reported the most modern packages I was installing had over 200 vulnerabilities. JavaScript pretty much guarantees shit code. I'll be downvoted to hell, but whatever. Js sucks.

<comment><USER25> I think this is a symptom of being accessible not the language or its tools. NPM is fantastic and anytime I use Go or anything like that I miss it sorely.

Even javascript itself isn't "bad". There are ugly parts but anything written in the modern spec is basically semantically the same as any other language like python.

The problem is that people writing packages on the backend are bootcamp grads, frontend devs, and any number of other people who don't take the backend as seriously as someone who has been devoted to it using a non-javascript language.

I think the other issue is the javascript community wants to reinvent itself every couple months, instead of having one project that becomes defacto for x function over many years.

<comment><USER26> I don't think it is possible to separate language from tools or community. Those things are always together.

It is entirely possible that Javascript itself is an OK language, but it is too late now. The community has already decided that packages should be tiny, that changing prototype of "array" object is an acceptable thing to do, that failing fast is bad and the best reaction to errors is to mess up the page layout in the unexpected way, and so on.

Maybe one day, Javascript will re-invent itself and get reliable software engineering practices. But I highly doubt that -- there are countless people who know the laguage already, and they are not going to be changing their opinions overnight.

<comment><USER27> > changing prototype of "array" object is an acceptable thing to do

Uhh, no? I code in JS every day and do nothing of the sort, and I would object if I saw it.

> failing fast is bad and the best reaction to errors is to mess up the page > layout in the unexpected way

I don't even know what you mean by this, but the fact that you're conflating JS with "the page" suggests to me that you're not that familiar with server- side JS (which has no "page") and the enormous amount of code that is written to be compatible with it.

<comment><USER28> > _Uhh, no? I code in JS every day and do nothing of the sort, and I would > object if I saw it._

If you use Babel you already have that, and just don't know about it. Most "upcoming features" shims do just that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> You took a declarative language (HTML) and mad it imperative (Python). Why is that a good thing?

<comment><USER30> I've been thinking about this sort of thing a lot recently in terms of our heavy use of Troposphere[1] which is a Python abstraction over AWS CloudFormation and how much better that abstraction is than just writing HTML (in the case of this library) or JSON/YAML (in the case of CloudFormation) directly.

Ultimately, for me, it comes down to what makes sometimes complicated declarative code easier to reason about, read and understand - it's a simple as that.

Some things are just _easier_ to write when you've got the power of a Turing- complete language with a decent standard library behind you; if for example you want to dump out a sorted list and then be able to easily update it later, or print a list of links alongside a hash of the contents of their targets.

I guess if you're building a simple website, anything like this tool could be overkill and you'd risk spending more time setting things up - and maintaining it in the future - than you'd be likely to save by using the tool in the first place. But for more complicated output having more tools to use lets you be arguably more declarative; you just change the input data to generate the desired output. You describe and allow automation of the _transition_ from input data to the desired end point.

I could definitely see how libraries like this would be tremendously useful for generating HTML. As it happens for our AWS infrastructure generation we enforce the use of Troposphere everywhere, because in that case the cost of setting up and maintaining it is essentially just copy-pasting an existing Makefile.

[1] [https://github.com/cloudtools/troposphere/](https://github.com/cloudtools/troposphere/)

<comment><USER31> If you like troposphere, you'll love stacker:

[https://github.com/cloudtools/stacker](https://github.com/cloudtools/stacker)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Very cool project. Are there any major apps that use Reahl? I can't find any.

</comment><comment><USER33> What's wrong with building them in Javascript :)

</comment><comment><USER34> Haven't heard of this before. Seems cool!

</comment><comment><USER35> What are big differences compared to Django and Flask?

</comment><comment><USER36> "one language only" if you don't count the javascript, html and css.

<comment><USER37> > "one language only" if you don't count the javascript, html and css.

My hunch is that you strove for making the First Comment considering that the point of this project is exactly what you said it isn't.

[https://www.reahl.org/layout](https://www.reahl.org/layout), for instance, talks about how styling works.

Taking this further, here's a comment from one of the maintainers on the relevant Google Group:

> Hello.

> We want casual users of Reahl to be shielded from complexities such as > client side scripting and CSS.

> HOWEVER, if you are prepared to move to the next level of learning you can > build your own Widgets. When you build your own Widget you can do anything > you like - using techniques tutorial.pagerbootstraptutorial.pagerbootstrap > that you would have used with a traditional framework.

Hopefully this answers your question.

<comment><USER36> The post title is misleading.

<comment><USER38> What do you think would be a better title? I read "web apps" I think html, css, and js. I wasn't expecting (nor would I want to) to ship Python to the browser.

<comment><USER37> That might be what's being lost in translation here. Python is the development language. If we're to analogize, HTML/JS/CSS would be the runtime stack. Perhaps this is what's lost on mruniverse</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Film Discovery Platform - <AUTHOR>

I'm developing a film discovery app for iOS, imagine goodreads for movies.  Does anyone have any thoughts on whether I should use an affiliate program like iTunes or fandango, or an open source API like the movie data base API for movie metadata? <comment><USER2> Trackerama ([http://www.trackerama.com/](http://www.trackerama.com/)) uses TMDB ([https://www.themoviedb.org/](https://www.themoviedb.org/)), may be worth considering ...

<comment><AUTHOR> are there any legal/copyright issues from using TMDB API?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Have a look at Gyde to see what others are doing in this space. Can't say I have found it that useful but worth checking out

[http://gyde.tv/](http://gyde.tv/)

<comment><AUTHOR> are there any legal/copyright issues from using TMDB API?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Rovi - www.rovicorp.com</comment>


Kleiner Perkins Sued By Partner Ellen Pao For Alleged Sexual Harassment - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/22/kleiner-perkins-sexual-harassment-lawsuit-ellen-pao/?icid=tc_home_art& <comment><USER2> This is really unacceptable behavior for a VC firm (or any business) to tolerate; Ellen is one of the best VCs at the firm, and I can't imagine it was easy for her to decide to sue her firm.

It seems crazy to me that KPCB would have a large number of female partners and then marginalize them.</comment>


The real GDrive is here - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZjHg62-3JM

<comment><USER2> Do you really want to give yourselves the same name as a boy band from 10 years ago?

</comment><comment><USER3> Hello all, I'm one of the founders of Insync. I shared the demo with Noah not knowing he would post it here. I'm glad he did :)

I will be glad to answer any questions.

<comment><USER4> I'm a bit confused by the concept. Why would I want my documents to sync to gDocs – when I already have gDocs that handles all the syncing? Sell me!

* I don't even worry about offline access anymore, since I'm basically never offline.

* I can share a document in real-time over gDocs.

* The only reason I have now to keep a document out of gDocs is formatting issues. Since these documents are synced to gDocs, I'll likely loose all the formatting.

<comment><USER3> It depends on your use case. Personally, I use Google Docs and Office.

But beyond that, it handles syncing and sharing outside of the GDocs folder. The feature set is actually quite broad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I looked at the video, I looked at your site, and I still don't understand what the big difference between you and Dropbox is.

I realize the "Dropbox Killer" title wasn't accurate (or posted by you!), but from your other comments, it does look like you're competing with Dropbox (correct me if I'm wrong). Which is why I keep trying to understand what you do better, and failing.

Some background about me: I don't use Google Docs at all (which might be a problem, since your demo seems focused on that). I use and love Dropbox, I'm a paying customer (50Gb). I don't have any major complaints about Dropbox, it's been a dream so far, but I'm always open to alternatives.

<comment><USER3> Besides the GDocs integration, the big differences are our business edition that integrates tightly with Google Apps and shared folder recipients are not counted against their storage quota.

And a bunch of little things.

<comment><USER5> I don't know if you plan to actually market yourselves as a "better Dropbox". But if you do, you should make the differences (and similarities) much clearer. As someone who understands what Dropbox is, the sentence you wrote above is excellent: I know exactly what you are (like Dropbox), but also where you're better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This looks awesome, something I'd use every day.

My co-founder and I currently use Google Docs for everything from financial planning to project management (to-do lists, features, planning, spreadsheet feedback forms, etc.), but we also use Dropbox for sharing anything except docs and spreadsheets (stuff like sharing images and assets with our designers, etc.) It'd be great to bring it all under one program.

<comment><USER3> Thanks! Hope you give it a shot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Funny, but calling something a "DropBox Killer" can easily backfire. It just reinforces Dropbox's position as the leader.

Someone who doesn't understand all the technology might not be able to distinguish features and prefer to go with the established entrenched leader (as confirmed by you!) over something 5% better that might not be here 6 months from now. Just a thought.

<comment><USER8> rsync + fuse + s3 is a dropbox killer. If you don't care about web and fancy iphone apps.

<comment><USER9> And if you don't care about sharing documents with anyone other than a select few.

<comment><USER10> This is indeed a huge plus. "I can't disinfect your computer, I know absolutely nothing about Windows" works wonders too. Geek snobbism my friend!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Whoa. A bit surprised to see this get voted up so quickly. I guess people either want an alternative to DropBox or like the Google Docs Offline Sync. Thoughts?

</comment><comment><USER11> Text documents are the last thing I would use dropbox for _because_ I have google docs. And I'm a heavy using, paying dropbox user - I don't think you can find many people to pay money for this.

<comment><USER3> We handle all file types and in-file deltas as well as deduping.

<comment><USER11> But what do you do that dropbox doesn't, besides google apps syncing, that makes Insync a Dropbox killer?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How does it handle complexly formatted documents? That's one of my main complaints of Google Docs (and main reason why I still use Office 2007 for all of my "serious" word processing needs).

<comment><USER13> Really? Maybe I missed the train but I wouldn't produce something that needs serious formatting in Office. I would imagine a language like LaTeX or even Markdown would be a better choice for seamless sharing between applications and the web?

<comment><USER14> Don't understand the downvotes here. This is exactly what I do — we just submitted at 20,000 word academic grant application with 15 collaborators at 6 sites. There is no way we could have done this in (sanely) in Word. We used our own etherpad instance to edit Markdown, then pandoc to convert to latex. Worked like a dream, and no old profs able to screw up the formatting.

<comment><USER13> Yes, the down votes on my previous thread confuses me. I am definitely not the larges MS Word lover in the bunch; however, there is no way that the wonderfully intelligent community that is HN is depending on it to format text that is being sent to an otherwise diverse group of people and platforms. One word simply comes to mind, "bizarre."

<comment><USER15> It's certainly great if you don't have to use Word. Many people have to, though, because they depend on other people who can only or will only use Word.

Writing in that context 'but you don't really have to use Word' without actually answering the relevant question is wildly off topic and irrelevant and only true for a, I would guess, rather small subset of people.

<comment><USER13> Nothing is going to fall apart if you write everything in full .txt files. Word, iWork, Google Docs, and generally everything will open the file and it isn't formated with the likes of Word.

If you feel truly and honestly feel that you need to use a piece of software to appease a group of people, you have some deep seated issues with creativity. Of course I use the word you in reference to people who feel this way and not to anyone in the thread directly.

<comment><USER15> I use Word from time to time (but not if I don't have to) because I don't want to be a total douchebag. Life involves compromises. Working together with other people involves compromises. I can't always convince everyone that we really should be using something different.

Oh, and while I am more than willing to agree with you that Word sucks I have no qualms using and liking other software which ultimately doesn't give me text files. I absolutely adore InDesign and see no reason why I shouldn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Looks cool. What happens when two users are editing a file at once? How does it handle the merging?

<comment><USER3> If gdocs to gdocs, then google takes care of it. If desktop to gdocs, we employ a simple conflict resolution where the conflicted copy gets saved locally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> How is this fundamentally different then SugarSync, or SpiderOak? There are at least 50 cloud storage apps all vying for the same market - why is this any better?

</comment><comment><USER18> Here is the URL.

<https://www.insynchq.com/>

InsyncHQ (as in head quarters)

<comment><USER3> Thanks Mahmud for not just posting the link but helping us review our backend gratis! Cool guy!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's ok. Definitely don't see this as a 'startup' perse. Maybe if it gains traction Google would do a talent acquisition to continue to build out Google Docs.

Definitely not a "DropBox Killer" though.

The concept is not bad, but in the age of Etherpad and Google Wave, this kinda feels a bit dated.

<comment><USER19> What's with the downvoting?

<comment><USER13> People don't seem to care for the tagline: "a Dropbox Killer"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What makes it a dropbox killer rather than a dropbox clone?

</comment><comment><USER21> I would certainly appreciate the sync functionality with Google Docs. On the other hand, most of the time I just use Google Docs -- I don't switch back and forth from desktop to Google Docs, like in the video.

<comment><USER18> This is for when you work with people who use MS Office.

      "hey bro, install Insynchq"

That's it; you can stay in Google Docs, and they can stay in MS Office. Look ma, no manual document re-uploading needed!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I could see how you might be able to compete with Dropbox on price. Google storage is a lot cheaper than dropbox. Dropbox 50Gb is $120/yr (last I checked). Google will sell you 400Gb for $100/yr.

</comment><comment><USER23> What'd really like to see is sharing specific folders with friends or colleagues who also use this app, just like Google apps allows you to share files with anyone.

<comment><USER3> We support that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Cool idea but the reason I use Google Docs is because I don't have/want Microsoft Office on my computer - and for the sharing/collaboration.

I could see this being useful for notes and the like, but I've been a loyal Simplenote user for over a year now and I can't see myself ditching it for this.

<comment><USER18> I am a beta user and a die-hard Google Docs user. I found Insynchq immensily useful when working with MS Office shops; you just tell them to install the client and they will never have to email you a document again. Edits, deletions, etc. everything is kept track of without you having to move from version to version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I like the app - seems pretty cool.

But what's the business here if all the storage is handled by Google?

<comment><USER3> The Google Docs folder is the only part where storage is handled by Google. Folders outside of that can be shared and/or synced and their storage is handled by Insync.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Dropbox killer is a bit dramatic. This seems to focus on syncing with Google Docs and desktop apps, Dropbox's aim is much more broad. I would venture to guess Dropbox already has something like this in the works as a feature.

<comment><USER3> The Google Docs sync is one of our features. There's a list on our homepage with screenshots – <http://insynchq.com>

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Just one simple comment: the app name and URL do not match which can be an issue for adoption. I would consider an app name where you can match the two. Tricky to do these days but worth it IMO.

<comment><USER28> Of course, DropBox was originally www.getdropbox.com, so they could make the transition too if they can afford a matching domain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> A business which depends on google can't be called startup, it's a hack! They will let you live for a while then suddenly they will pull the plug.

<comment><USER29> Rapportive seems to be doing _very_ well, and is certainly a "business which depends on google" right now.

<comment><USER30> For starters, it's not business yet - there's no money coming in, except funding. Second, they will do very well as long as Google tolerate them messing with GMail UI. So, it's a feature - yes, a clever hack - yes, but not really a sustainable business.

<comment><USER18> Insynchq has desktop clients for Windows, Mac and iPhone, and a client API. It can be used for document synching for things other than Google Docs, you can use it for asset management if you're a graphics designer, iterating through versions and allowing a client to see changes immediately. You can use it for synching and sharing any other documents as well.

How is that a mere hack?

<comment><USER31> I think it's due to your branding/feature page. The way it's presented, it's easy to think it's only work with Google Docs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Not a "DropBox Killer" since I don't think dropping 1 GB Photoshop files into Google Apps is a good idea.

But awesome anyway!

</comment><comment><USER33> How do you differentiate yourself from Memeo Connect, Syncplicity, or even something like Gladinet?

</comment><comment><USER34> Don't forget about SpiderOak when looking at Backup, Sync and share for Windows, Mac and Linux (Fedora, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, Slackware etc). <https://spideroak.com> \- like Dropbox but with more feature and security focus. Also 2+GB free with referrals etc.

</comment><comment><USER35> does this require a premium docs account? meaning a min # of paying users?

</comment><comment><USER36> I think it's a great idea. Makes Google docs much easier to access from other applications. It could really help in the corporate world where a company wants to migrate to Google Docs and legacy services need to be supported or to reduce training requirements.

It's no dropbox killer, but it serves different requirements. In fact, that title is link bait-ish. Nevertheless, it looks to me like it could be a viable product. I'd use it.</comment>


Investigating unusual member signups close to OpenStreetMap foundation election - <AUTHOR> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/osmf-talk/2019-January/005856.html <comment><AUTHOR> Direct link to report (PDF) [https://openstreetmap.lu/MWGGlobalLogicReport20181226.pdf](https://openstreetmap.lu/MWGGlobalLogicReport20181226.pdf)</comment>