Looks nice and clean. Good work.
Since 2019, I’ve been working on a writing platform designed for creating complex documents (e.g., theses). I personally use it for everything as it also allows to classify documents in categories so you can organize them efficiently. As of a few months ago, the app is also available in the browser, and you can now invite coworkers to collaborate on a document in real time.
The app is somewhat inspired by LyX. It offers an intuitive, modern editor, but users don’t need to know any LaTeX. When it’s time to export, they can choose from a range of templates (IEEE paper, thesis, etc.).
A few highlights:
- It uses a custom-built block editor that performs well with large documents. Each block is its own contenteditable element (instead of having one massive contenteditable for the whole document)
- If you prefer plain text - you can insert a Markdown block and write using Markdown instead
- Built-in citation management
- Support for cross-references and footnotes
- Mermaid diagrams, inline LaTeX equations, and display math are all supported
- "To-do" sections help you stay organized while writing
You can try it out here: https://www.monsterwriter.com/
1. collect and prioritize relevant research papers
2. make notes and synthesize ideas across my reading
3. use the notes to assemble draft of original writing
4. seamlessly move my own writings into LaTeX documents along with citation details
and ended up in Obsidian where I basically had to build my own tool anyway. Which I never did, because I just wanted to focus on research without fooling around with tools.
Also, your images and carousel element don't look right on android Firefox
There are a ton of tools that claim to be one stop shops, but of course, almost none have all the features you would want.
Hence it makes sense to separate the different parts (to use tools that are excellent/powerful at any one task), and use some intermediary in the middle. Of course this isn't as efficient and frictionless as possible, but it allows compatibility.
I suppose in today's "everything is a file" computing paradigm, files (or folders) with data are probably the closest? It is far from perfect, but it's possible to integrate with a bit of legwork with scripts and the like.
That way you can import from your browser/extension of choice, save it in a form (.md? .odt/docx?) of choice, and export it as you please (ppts or pdfs? webpages?).
Over time I developed the opinion that LaTeX is an unnecessary tax on scientific progress. It's insanity to keep using it when HTML exists.
At least, the developer should specify how long the product will be supported for security and bug fixes.
A great solution, if you can pull it off: You continue maintaining the base product indefinitely, but "v2" features are disabled until the user pays more. And if you buy v2 in full you get the full feature set.
I have zero issue with developers charging for a version 2, updates, maintenence, etc. Just make it crystal clear.
Why do all these Notion “replacements” seem to think Notion is just an MD editor and note taker. It seems the unique position of notion is the ability to integrate databases into documents much less within each other. That’s the feature most of these replacements are missing.
Honestly if Notion would offer a self hosted version for companies, that would be a killer feature. Until then, I’m waiting until a feature for feature open source replacement appears.
Cloud hosting is the killer feature. No one wants to be in the hosting business. There are enough other things for a company to worry about.
Managing servers, deployments, zero downtime upgrades, security patches, monitoring CVEs, auth, 2FA, lost passwords, DDoS attacks, database maintenance, sharding, migration, load balancing, caching, DNS, reliability, latency, uptime, load testing, a million different dashboards, 24x7 on call... Paying $10/mo to offload all of this is a steal.
Team members all have local Latex installs as they have CS/math backgrounds.
Works well, easy to onboard new colleagues. Probably harder if there were people with other backgrounds (MBA), however an industrial designer on the team also uses GitHub for basic pull/commit.
For my fiction writing, I also use local Latex install+GitHub.