Use External Tools

Notes about using external (or 3rd party) tools on CoCalc.

Sync with Dropbox or Google Drive?

We do not support Google Drive at present, but we plan to.

Following the instructions at https://www.dropbox.com/install-linux you can install it in a Linux Terminal. However, Dropbox recently made a very sad decision to not support Linux (except ext4 unencrypted, which is a nonstarter), so Dropbox is no longer possible with CoCalc.

Mount remote files via SSHFS

You can use sshfs as explained at Remote files with SSH. Note that using sshfs directly from the CoCalc terminal is not supported.

Use Emacs in a Terminal (Chrome)

Chrome absolutely doesn’t allow normal web applications to intercept certain keystrokes, which makes Emacs-in-a-terminal painful on some operating systems (esp. Linux/Windows). E.g., Ctrl-N brings up a new window, instead of going to the next line!

However, you can install the CoCalc chrome app from the app store or on Linux, type

google-chrome --app=https://cocalc.com/app

to start the website as an “app”. (If you use chromium instead, type chromium-browser --app=https://cocalc.com/app).

This is not a completely solution since in some cases, control-shift-minus and control-shift-plus still zoom in and out (on ChromeOS they zoom the entire desktop – every window, all icons, the time, etc., in and out!).

This is a major problem, because control-shift-minus is “undo” in emacs. The workaround I currently use is to put this in my .emacs file, and instead type “alt-u” for undo:

(define-key esc-map "u" 'undo)

Note that undo is also available by default through other key bindings, like C-x u and C-/. (Execute “M-x where-is undo”.) So there are other options available.

Customized version of FriCAS

The following Sage/Python command modifies the PATH variable to include $HOME/bin. Sage looks for the fricas executable in this PATH:

os.environ['PATH'] = '%s/bin:%s'%(os.environ['HOME'],os.environ['PATH'])

Restart the Sage worksheet to make sure the new version of FriCAS is started.

Pentadactyl plugin isn’t working

The Pentadactyl plugin is not compatible with the Codemirror editor in CoCalc. You can disable Pentadactyl for a particular page, perhaps by pressing Control+Z. CoCalc has it’s own Vim bindings for worksheets and editing files; to enable it, go to Project Settings (click the gear by your name in the upper right), then select Vim next to Editor → Bindings.