A real-time collaboration and discussion forum with LaTeX math support, designed for supercollaboration on unsolved problems.
Coauthor is a web-based collaborative tool designed for group discussion, note-taking, and real-time editing, with a focus on enabling supercollaboration on unsolved problems in theoretical computer science. It provides a structured environment with strong support for mathematical notation via LaTeX and KaTeX, flexible message organization, and features like live updates, threaded discussions, and file attachments. The tool aims to facilitate deep, persistent collaboration on complex topics.
Researchers, academics, and teams in theoretical computer science or mathematics who need to collaborate on unsolved problems, as well as other groups requiring structured, real-time discussion with robust mathematical notation support. It is particularly suited for multi-author projects where version history, permissions, and flexible formatting are critical.
Developers choose Coauthor for its specialized focus on mathematical collaboration, offering real-time operational transform editing, extensive LaTeX support with KaTeX rendering, and fine-grained permissions at group, thread, and message levels. Unlike generic collaboration tools, it combines features like advanced search with regex, email notifications with clustering, and the ability to download groups as offline HTML/CSS archives for long-term preservation.
Coauthor supercollaboration/discussion forum
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Uses operational transforms for simultaneous editing with coauthorship tracking, similar to Google Docs, enabling seamless group work on proofs and notes as highlighted in the README.
Integrates KaTeX for LaTeX math rendering, supporting a wide range of functions and environments like align and gather, ideal for theoretical computer science and mathematics.
Messages are organized in arbitrary tree structures with focus, fold, and minimize capabilities, allowing deep threaded discussions and easy navigation.
Features search across groups with operators for tags, authors, emoji, and regular expressions, making it efficient to find specific content in collaborative works.
Requires setting up the Meteor framework and server dependencies, as detailed in INSTALL.md, which can be challenging for users without technical expertise.
Heavy emphasis on LaTeX and structured formats may overwhelm casual users or teams in non-academic fields, limiting its general applicability.
Live previews have a 1-second delay to reduce history bloat, which might impact the immediacy of edits in fast-paced collaborations, as admitted in the README.