Four years of collaboration with the LaTeX Community forums and sites

Just over four years ago we began one of our first collaborations – working with Stefan Kottwitz of the LaTeX Community forums and sites such as TeXample.net and pgfplots.net to provide a direct way for users of those sites to open up code examples directly in Overleaf (then called WriteLaTeX).

To get an idea of how it works, try clicking on the image below. It will open up in Overleaf for immediate editing online, just as if you'd clicked on the "Open in Overleaf" link on the example itself.

This means that whenever you see a cool example on one of the LaTeX Community sites, you can open it in Overleaf to try it out for yourself!

In the forums, this works by providing this "Open in Overleaf" link above any code boxes that are included in a forum question or answer. By a single click, you will land in the editor which shows the code on the left side, and the output preview on the right side, with the compilation done automatically. This allows you to explore solutions to problems you've posted in the forums without having to copy and paste – you can open it for editing and viewing with a single click, modify and test it as required, and get to a working answer even without having a local TeX installation.

It also works for small snippets too, adding a basic wrapping to (in most cases where extra packages aren't required) allow the code to compile on the first run.

To try it out, simply visit this post on the forum, and click on the "Open in Overleaf" button for either of the examples.

We appreciate all the work Stefan and the community have put into building and maintaining these forums and examples galleries, and are looking forward to many more years of collaboration ahead! Happy TeXing! :-)