# CRA-ShareLaTeX-妈妈再也不用担心我的 Overleaf 掉线了

[The English version is in the second part of the article.](#Introducing CRA-ShareLaTeX: The Self-hosted Overleaf on Campus)

LaTeX，是一种基于TEX排版系统，由美国计算机科学莱斯利·兰伯特在20世纪80年代初期开发，利用这种格式系统的处理，即使用户没有排版和程序设计的知识也可以充分发挥由TEX所提供的强大功能，不必一一亲自去设计或校对，能在几天，甚至几小时内生成很多具有书籍质量的印刷品。对于生成复杂表格和数学公式，这一点表现得尤为突出。因此它非常适用于生成高印刷质量的科技数学物理文档。这个系统同样适用于生成从简单的信件到完整书籍的所有其他种类的文档。

## 如何体验

CRA-ShareLaTeX目前允许邮箱后缀为edu.cn的用户自助注册，如果您的邮箱域名为其他后缀，请您发送一封主题为“sharelatex测试”的邮件至service@cra.moe。我们将会在第一时间给您发送开通的确认邮件。(如需了解如何修改前端以启用自助注册，请参考这篇博客)

# Introducing CRA-ShareLaTeX: The Self-hosted Overleaf on Campus

The LaTeX is an familiar typesetting language to every student of SUSTech, and you may have heard his name in many engineering courses. As a typesetting language, Latex is widely used in math/engineering fields, but many students are discouraged by Latex’s complex compiler configuration, Chinese support issues and Gigabytes of installation packages.

LaTeX (/ˈlɑːtɛx/ LAH-tekh or /ˈleɪtɛx/ LAY-tekh[1]), stylized within the system as LATEX, is a software system for document preparation.[2] When writing, the writer uses plain text as opposed to the formatted text found in “What You See Is What You Get” word processors like Microsoft Word, LibreOffice Writer and Apple Pages. The writer uses markup tagging conventions to define the general structure of a document (such as article, book, and letter), to stylise text throughout a document (such as bold and italics), and to add citations and cross-references. A TeX distribution such as TeX Live or MikTeX is used to produce an output file (such as PDF or DVI) suitable for printing or digital distribution.–Wikipedia

The advent of the online LaTeX editor Overleaf solved many of the problems of native LaTeX, allowing writers to edit LaTeX code directly from their browser and preview the rendered document instantly..

Unfortunately, accessing Overleaf on the campus internet still has some issues like slow access speed, dropped connections, and other connectivity issues. Also, the free version of Overleaf does not allow for multi-person collaboration (as shown below, accounts capable of supporting 10 people collaboration charge 15USD/month) and document history, which are critical features for team projects.

To allow more students to experience LaTeX as a typographic language and to reduce the barriers to people using it. The on-campus ShareLaTeX service (sharelatex and overleaf have been merged to refer to the same service), deployed by the Computer Research Association of SUSTech (CRA) in cooperation with the Center for Computational Science and Engineering (CCSE), is now online. The service is based on the open source version of sharelatex, with full Chinese language support and code highligt feature added.

CRA-ShareLaTeX also supports unlimited number of collaborators and unlimited time to compile documents to optimize the students’ experience when writing group projects.

## How to use?

Due to software limitations, CRA-ShareLaTeX is currently unavailable for self-registration.

**CRA-ShareLaTeX currently allows users who has an email ends with edu.cn to self-registration. If you would like to try CRA-ShareLaTeX with other email address, please send an email with the subject “sharelatex test” to service@cra.moe. We will send you a confirmation email as soon as possible. **

If you have any questions about this service or need assistance, you are also welcome to send an email to service@cra.moe.