Fidus Writer

Fidus Writer

Fidus Writer is a free and open source online collaborative document editor. It allows real-time collaboration for writing documents like research papers, reports, books with features including comments, tracked changes, and export options.
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collaborative document-editor research-writing open-source

Fidus Writer: Free Online Collaborative Document Editor

Real-time collaboration for writing documents like research papers, reports, books with features including comments, tracked changes, and export options.

What is Fidus Writer?

Fidus Writer is a free and open source web-based collaborative document editor for academics and researchers. It is designed for collaboratively writing long documents like research papers, theses, books and reports.

Key features of Fidus Writer:

  • Real-time collaboration - Multiple authors can edit the same document at the same time with changes visible to co-authors instantly.
  • Comments and discussions - Annotations and comments can be added anywhere in the document to propose changes or discuss sections.
  • Tracked changes - Track all changes made by authors to see the document history.
  • Writer and reader views - Authors have access to editing while readers have a clean read-only view.
  • Academic formats - Supports citing sources and formatting in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard and over 9800 citation styles.
  • Export to .pdf, .epub and .docx formats.
  • Latex support - Latex equations and macros are fully supported with integrated Latex rendering.
  • 100% free and open source software.

With its focus on academic writing collaborations and real-time co-editing capabilities, Fidus Writer is a great free alternative to restrictive commercial tools like Microsoft Word and Google Docs.

Fidus Writer Features

Features

  1. Real-time collaborative editing
  2. Comments and discussions
  3. Tracked changes
  4. Citations and bibliographies
  5. Export to PDF, HTML, ePub
  6. Support for LaTeX equations
  7. Word processor like features

Pricing

  • Free
  • Open Source

Pros

Free and open source

Good collaboration features

User friendly interface

Supports LaTeX equations

Can export to multiple formats

Cons

Limited compared to full featured word processors

Lacks some advanced formatting options

Collaboration requires creating an account

Only available as web app


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