LaTeX Workflow on iPad

This is great to see, but also really frustrating. I see Apple pushing to make iPadOS feel more 'real computer', but these sorts of basic Unixy workflows still feel very hacky, particularly when it comes time to save things to the 'File system', as it were. I look forward to a day when I can someday actually use things like XeLaTeX and Pandoc on an iPad to accomplish my actual work, but for now, I'm finding myself editing Markdown and TeX now, and compiling later. Not great, but good enough.

I've often wondered whether Apple could do well by doing something similar to Crostini on ChromeOS, to allow these things to actually work as intended, but without impacting security. But that also probably doesn't sell software as effectively, as free software doesn't pay Apple's cut.

Re: LaTeX Workflow on iPad

#5

Post by benrbray » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 2:48 AM UTC

d3ron wrote: post #2

Well, I just use Overleaf to do my LaTeX work on my iPad.

It seems the author wanted a solution that would work offline as well.

Re: LaTeX Workflow on iPad

#6

Post by wanderfowl » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 2:49 AM UTC

d3ron wrote: post #2

Well, I just use Overleaf to do my LaTeX work on my iPad.

Overleaf's fine, but lack of offline editing, and more crucially, trusting my main working copy to live only on somebody else's computer, is a bit of a non-starter for me.

Plus, call me an idealist, but it feels like a huge step back when a device requires a paid web service to do something that's completely free on a real computer. I don't know that "pay somebody else" should be hailed as the solution to "good software doesn't work on this device".

Re: LaTeX Workflow on iPad

#7

Post by macintux » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 2:50 AM UTC

wanderfowl wrote: post #4

This is great to see, but also really frustrating. I see Apple pushing to make iPadOS feel more 'real computer', but these sorts of basic Unixy workflows still feel very hacky, particularly when it comes time to save things to the 'File system', as it were. I look forward to a day when I can someday actually use things like XeLaTeX and Pandoc on an iPad to accomplish my actual work, but for now, I'm finding myself ed…

Apple doesn’t care about minuscule lost revenue because some people would want to run containers of free software. Drop in the bucket.

Re: LaTeX Workflow on iPad

#8

Post by tuananh » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 2:53 AM UTC

wanderfowl wrote: post #4

This is great to see, but also really frustrating. I see Apple pushing to make iPadOS feel more 'real computer', but these sorts of basic Unixy workflows still feel very hacky, particularly when it comes time to save things to the 'File system', as it were. I look forward to a day when I can someday actually use things like XeLaTeX and Pandoc on an iPad to accomplish my actual work, but for now, I'm finding myself ed…

The file manager improves but not by a lot.

I think iPadOS is only usable as an actual computer when they finally make the Terminal app on iPad and a much better File app

Re: LaTeX Workflow on iPad

#9

Post by kccqzy » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 3:12 AM UTC

wanderfowl wrote: post #4

This is great to see, but also really frustrating. I see Apple pushing to make iPadOS feel more 'real computer', but these sorts of basic Unixy workflows still feel very hacky, particularly when it comes time to save things to the 'File system', as it were. I look forward to a day when I can someday actually use things like XeLaTeX and Pandoc on an iPad to accomplish my actual work, but for now, I'm finding myself ed…

They could very well steal the WSL idea from Microsoft and make something similar. Currently there is iSH which runs certain Linux utilities unmodified, but I'd love to see first-party support.

Re: LaTeX Workflow on iPad

#10

Post by AceJohnny2 » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 3:41 AM UTC

I don't see TeXPad mentioned anywhere. An iOS LaTeX environment, featured here a few years ago: https://www.texpad.com/blog/latex-ported-to-ipad

https://www.texpad.com/ios