# Online Whiteboard Application with Simple Latex Support

Like a lot of people, my school is in the position of having to move their courses online. Does anyone know a good whiteboard app that allows simple latex entry? The closest I've been able to find is Twiddla

https://www.twiddla.com/t0xq6n

but that still requires entering the equation in another window and then dragging it into position. My ultimate preference would be ability to click anywhere, type latex as normal, and have the text appear at that spot. I'm open to variations but please restrict suggestions to apps/sites/programs that are latex compatible and able to be drawn on as a whiteboard.

• Best I can think of is the program IPE ( ipe.otfried.org ) which I have used in the past to create graphics to insert in documents. I just now realized, reading your question, that you could probably use it kinda like a whiteboard.When you click to add a text box, you can type LaTeX code and then compile it on the spot. – Brendan W. Sullivan Mar 13 '20 at 19:36
• That's very cool, thank you! – Nate Bade Mar 13 '20 at 19:41
• I tried Twiddla, and it gave an error message saying, "Cookies required. Please turn them on in your browser." This happens even in a browser configured to accept cookies. – Ben Crowell Mar 28 '20 at 12:48

Wanted to make this a comment but don't have enough reputation.

There's Scratchwork and WorldWideWhiteboard that do what you want. They allow you to write in latex and it appears automatically on the board.

Update: 3 Nov 2020: https://whiteboard.fi/

• Since these cost money, I assume that only the teacher would be able to write math. Seems like a good way to kill student participation. – Ben Crowell Mar 28 '20 at 12:46
• This is great, I will have to play around with scratchworks and see what it's upper limit on free users is. Thanks! – Nate Bade Mar 28 '20 at 23:48
• Scratchwork is the best I've found so far. It's a little buggy, and the rendering is fuzzy, and it seems to have trouble with text entry from iOS, but I haven't found anything else. – postylem Jul 24 '20 at 20:01

maybe this whiteboard:

https://www.mathcha.io/

https://tableaunoir.github.io/

Regards,

Enrique

• Welcome to the site, Enrique! I couldn't find TeX support on Tableaunoir, did I miss it? Re mathcha.io, this is an awesome tool! Just linking to it vastly undersells it. Could you perhaps expand your answer with one screenshot and maybe some (dis)advantages of mathcha? E.g. one advantage would be that it's keyboard driven, so for entering a formula, there's no need to click some GUI buttons (as is the case with whiteboard.fi from the other answer). One disadvantage is that it's not collaborative. You can only share read-only links. But even those are not "live", you have manually reload. – ComFreek Jan 2 at 10:24
• To activate LaTeX in Tableaunoir, start a new text box and type a mathematical expression using dollar signs, like "\$x+1=4\$". Then hit the Esc. key and it will automatically format the math in LaTeX. – FoiledIt24 Jan 2 at 20:37

My suggestion is to use a Jupyter notebook or Google Colab notebook together with a browser marker plugin. You can't quite type anywhere; but you can inline or center the latex per usual. I use chrome with a free app called "page marker" that lets me draw on any window in chrome, whether that's my Jupyter notebook or a Colab one.