You can create a new document using the Start from a sample document... menu item of the Help menu. Select the “LaTeX minimal document” in the list. You will be prompted for a title (which cannot be changed afterward) and the number of authors. Documents Live will generate fake authors for you; you can always edit them later.

You can upload a zip archive of your project to the server. First, select the “Upload” item in the menu bar. After that, you will be asked to provide some front matter information. There are two options:

• provide the info as a BibTeX entry
• enter the info manually.

Once the info is given, you can proceed with the upload itself. You will have two options for the document source language: LaTeX or Markdown.

1.2.1 Media files

1.2.2 Upload media

Once the document source is created on the server, you are re-directed to your dashbord. Here is a snapshot.

Pan/Zoom

Here you have the list of all the document you own. If the document has been exported to a web page, clicking on its title will display the page. At the right, you have the action menu, which lists the actions you can perform on you document.

If you select the “Import” action, the server will create a document model from the source code that you have provided. This model has two main characteristics:

1. it is hierarchical
2. it is object oriented

The document hierarchy is defined by the sectioning commands. The top-level sectioning command defines the document’s top level. Sections below this level must belong to a section that is higher in the hierarchy. As a consequence, there cannot be a lower-level section before the first top-level section. This kind of section would typically have a section number in LaTeX which begins with a zero, which does indicate that it is out of place.

Every element of the document is an object with properties and methods. Sections are such objects. Paragraphs are also objects. Theorems are also objects.

Document objects are organized hierarchically. A theorem can contain a paragraph, and not the other way. Theorems are actually quite versatile objects and can include figures, equations, etc...

There are three document languages in Documents Live:

• LaTeX
• Markdown
• HTML

Most document object types have a version in each of the three languages. Depending on the language, the objects implement at least one of the following methods:

• import from the language to the model
• export from the model to the language

Specifically, as detailed in figure 1:

• LaTeX objects can import from the code to the model, and can export from the model to LaTeX code.
• Markdown objects can import from Markdown source code to the model.
• HTML can export from the model to HTML code.

In this section, we typically import a model from the LaTeX source.

In the snapshot, you can see that there is also a “Split import” option in the action menu. This option is for large documents (more than 25 pages). It splits the import process into several import subtasks. When all subtasks have been performed, you can assemble the result as an object, one level higher in the hierarchy. This is recursive, and at the top level you assemble the document model itself.

Front matter You can edit your front matter info (affiliations, emails, etc...) on the dedicated page. Know that to make the changes effective, you need to (re-)import you document to the model. If you work on a large document, it is better to edit the front matter data before importing.

Debug If errors are notified after the import process, you can access the document log from the action menu to get some information on what happened. Import errors can be fixed only by editing the source code.

Documents Live provides an online editor for your source code that is based on the Ace editor . Most of the interface of the code editor is the same in all editors available in Documents Live: source code editor, inline editor and discussion editor.

The source code editor can be accessed for you document in two ways:

• from the action menu in the dashboard
• from the document web page by selecting “Edit source” in the View menu of the menu bar.

For more details on the source code editor, please refer to the help on the source code editor .

You can access the Inline Editor for a document in two ways:

• in the document dashboard, select the Inline edit item in the Action menu for your document
• from the View page of your document, select the Inline edit item in the View menu

After entering the edit mode, the Inline Editer in invoked simpling by clicking anywhere in the document main content (this exludes the front matter and bibliography). Once this is done, you are presented with a dialog which displays a list of the document objects that you can edit from the clicked position. This list features all the document objects that contain the clicked object. Typically, you will click on a paragraph. Most often, it will be including in section, which may be included in another one. Another possibility is that you clicked in a paragraph that belongs to a theorem. To edit an equation, click on it.

For more details, see the the help on the Inline Editor .

First, take a look at your document’s log, either from the dasboard or from the page view.

In the web page, text in red that says Label xxx not found indicates that the reference for a \ref command (or similar) was not found. In general, the problem should be tracked inside the source code editor.

In you see an equation with red commands inside, this means that the command was not understood by MathJax, the equation renderer. This maybe due to a faulty macros (in which case you should use the source editor), or by an unexpected space between the command and its parameter, in which case it is best to edit the equation in the Inline Editor.

If you see red text with a yellow background, this is math that MathJax totally failed to render. Try the Inline Editor first, and then the source code editor in case there was a bad macro, for instance. Below is garbage math:

Here, the closing statement \end{array} is missing.

For reasonably sized chunks of content, you can create, edit and delete parts of your document right from the Inline Editor. This manual was mostly written using the Inline Editor. As explained in the help on the Inline Editor , you can create, edit and delete objects with it, all of it interactively. The granularity of the Inline Editor lets you operate at any level of your document.

You will have the opportunity to edit the whole of your bibliography. To do so, eiher select “Edit bibliography” from the action menu in the dashboard, or do it directly from the view menu.

You edit a bibliography item by clicking on its title in the complete item list.

Once you have done the editing, you can export the changes to HTML. This means, that normally, you will not have to re-export the whole document. If this fails, however, you can export the whole document.

Note: if you re-import your document, the changes will be lost.

You can edit bibliography items individually if you are in edit mode, i.e. the Inline Editor is activated. To do so, click an item, edit it, and save. While this is quite flexible, it has not been as much battle-tested as the global bibliography editor.

This is currently unsupported. You can, however, upload a .bib file to the project that will replace all of the bibliography date. This can be done from the page of the global bibliography editor.

If you have not provided suitable front matter before importing the model, do it now. You will have to re-import and re-export the document.

This information is used by search engines and social media. You should provide the following textual information

• the document title
• the document description, which should be short
• the topic of the document
• the language of the document (it defaults to US-English)

After that,you will be invited to chose an image that will represent your document in search engines and social media. This must be one of the image files available in the document project. If you do not find a suitable image, this the opportunity to upload an image to your project and use it for this purpose. If you do nothing, the Documents Live icon will be used.