Full LaTeX on iPad with on device compilation and .dvi viewer
While on the train to work I came across a very interesting blog entry. Full LaTeX support (on device compilation and .dvi viewer) is now available on iPad courtesy of TeX Writer By FastIntelligence. Here is the blog post telling us the good news http://litchie.com/blog/?p=406
At the time of writing, the blog is down (Update: working again), possibly because of the click storm that my twitter announcement caused..especially after it was picked up by @TeXtip. So, here is the iTunes link http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tex-writer/id552717222?mt=8
I haven’t tried this yet but it looks VERY interesting. If you get a chance to try it out, feel free to let me know how you get on in the comments section.
Update 1: This version of TeX writer(1.1) cannot output to .pdf. Only .dvi output is supported at the moment.
Exciting news indeed!
I have some concerns on how convenient typing is, however. In particular when it comes to math. Unless you buy an external, physical keyboard I guess. Does anyone have experience with this app?
Thanks, Tom.
Tom, I prefer a physical keyboard (mine is the Logitech Tablet Keyboard for iPad) even for regular text of any length. No doubt it would be preferable to the touch keyboard. Aside from the better input, it also leaves all of the screen visible.
TeX Writer sure looks nifty, but I must say what I’d really like to see is a fully featured editor like TeXstudio with syntax highlighting, command menus etc. Output generation isn’t really an issue, I can do that on the desktop.
On-device full LaTeX support is possible on Android with Debian Kit, an installer for the ARM port of Debian Linux. Once you have Debian installed, you can use apt-get to install texlive, emacs, gcc and more. Way easier than cross-compiling for Android.
You might also like writeLaTeX (https://www.writelatex.com). It’s an online collaborative LaTeX editor that works great on the iPad – and it’s totally free.
Aside from having a great interface, the best part is that you don’t have to sign up to use it – so there’s absolutely no commitment, and if you don’t like it you can just move on.