Integrating with Overleaf

Overleaf provides a web-based interface for editing LaTeX in a more user-friendly fashion. Scriptorium solves some similar problems (collaboration, creating documents) with different choices, as well as addressing some different problems (e.g. smoothing the learning curve), but both tools can be integrated to work side-by-side. This page addresses some of the steps required to integrate the two, as well as some of the issues and limitations.

Basic Steps

1. Create project on Overleaf to contain the paper.
2. In Overleaf, under the "Share" menu, get the git repository address for the paper, and clone that repository to your local drive.
3. Copy/create your scriptorium, paper in the newly created folder.
4. Rename all MultiMarkdown files such that they use the .txt extension, as opposed to the .mmd. This is a limitation of Overleaf.
5. Always build your paper using scriptorium build -f, which will cause scriptorium to generate a flattened LaTeX file that Overleaf can parse.
6. Add the flattened LaTeX file to the repository, which is what Overleaf will build/view.

Limitations

1. If someone edits the LaTeX file directly on Overleaf, the changes will not be automatically integrated back into the MultiMarkdown files. There is no automated process for converting LaTeX to MultiMarkdown, meaning these changes will have to be manually shifted over.