The process

Neptune is a web application that provides a facility to edit LATEX documents as in any text editor in a desktop. While keeping the native LATEX experience, several other additional features have been provided to make the job easier.

Neptune is oriented towards editing journal articles which generally follow two workflows: (1) LATEX-first and (2) XML-first. In the first case, LATEX documents submitted by authors will be used to generate PDF output plus additionally XML format for archiving, while in the second case, authors’ LATEX file is first transformed into XML format and PDF output is generated from this XML. Hence named XML-first.

In both the workflows, PDF output is generated from LATEX sources either submitted by the author (LATEX-first workflow) or from a machine generated LATEX file from XML format derived from submissions (as in XML-first workflow). In the latter case, author’s submission is not directly used.

Neptune accepts both the LATEX formats — either author created or machine generated — and provides the same native experience of editing their sources with the same amount of freedom and convenience.

Neptune allows to edit text in any area of the document and to add/remove any object (section level heading, figures, tables, math, bibitems, …). If the editing results in any counter changes, all objects will be re-numbered and cross-references and citations will be instantaneously fixed automatically.

The PDF output can be generated any time and can be downloaded if needed.