CoCalc

CoCalc is a set of various tools to do programming, computation and other data editing online in a modern web browser. It is designed for research teams: collaboratively edit LaTeX documents, code in Jupyter Notebooks, or work directly in Linux terminals – all within a browser-based environment.

There is no need to install software locally and performance is mostly not limited by a computer's local resources.

CoCalc offers a comprehensive workspace for computational research and education. Users collaboratively edit LaTeX documents with live preview, code in Jupyter Notebooks (supporting Python, R, Octave, and more), or work directly in Linux terminals – all within a browser-based environment.

Changes are synchronized instantly across all collaborators in a project. Additionally, the platform ensures automatic version control through its TimeTravel functionality, allowing users to review or restore any previous file state.

CoCalc shares some features with with GWDG's JupyterCloud service, and indeed Jupyter notebooks are part of the toolkit, but offers more features like LaTeX writing and rendering, general code editing for programming and mathematics, slides, whiteboards and tools to organize a course.

• **Find the CoCalc service at: https://cocalc.gwdg.de **
• **Find the complete documentation at: https://doc.cocalc.com/ **
  • Getting started
  • How-tos
  • Instructor guide
  • Student guide

Your data, files and settings in CoCalc is organized in “Projects”. Each project is almost like a separate account in the service, has its own file space, runs its own tasks and can have its own collaborators or guests.

For a comprehensive introduction into how projects work please see the official manual (not all features may apply to the GWDG CoCalc service).

You can access all your projects by clicking on the link “Your projects” on top of the page:

The projects overview and subsequently all open projects are organized in “tabs”, also on the top row of the page. Click these to switch between different open projects and the projects overview.

From the “Projects” tab create a new project or start an existing one to start your work.

Once inside a project all aspects of the project can be accessed through a list of tabs on the left side.

Once a project is opened in order to work with it is should be “started”. There is a large prompt to do so or it can be explicitly started in the “Settings” tab at the bottom of the tabs list on the left side.

In a started project the “Explorer” tab shows all files of the project.

A project can also have several files and screens open at the same time. These will be listed in a second row of tabs along the top below the “Projects” tabs row.

The “New” tab in a project allows uploads of files and creation of various new files from the overview.

Several tasks like opening a terminal and starting various utilities is also done from the “New” tab.

Most actions result in a new project tab opening which can be accessed through the second tab row at the top.

The left list of tabs allows access to various functions to manage a project, such as reviewing the logs of activity, inviting others to a project (and thus all files in a project) and changing settings of a project.

CoCalc has various functions to conduct courses on the platform.

Refer to the original guide for teachers on how to utilize course functionality.

Students and participants should be directed to the student's guide for help with participating in courses on CoCalc.

As per the initial announcement the preview instance of the CoCalc service remains available for general access. Read the initial announcement to understand what this means and how this affects your interaction with the service, especially what restrictions apply.

Generally, using the main CoCalc service is strongly recommended.