The price of a messy codebase: No LaTeX on the iPad • Hacker News Board

Re: The price of a messy codebase: No LaTeX on the iPad

#11

Post by timdoug » Tue, Nov 22, 2011, 6:59 AM UTC

gamble wrote: post #2

I was agog when I downloaded the LaTeX binary install for my new Mac a few years ago and discovered how massive it was. LaTeX is almost as big as the entire operating system disk! What on earth is in there?

I can suggest the BasicTeX distro; it's only 69MB, and has always been sufficient for my (admittedly rather basic) TeX needs.

http://www.tug.org/mactex/morepackages.html

Re: The price of a messy codebase: No LaTeX on the iPad

#12

Post by einhverfr » Tue, Nov 22, 2011, 6:59 AM UTC

gamble wrote: post #2

I was agog when I downloaded the LaTeX binary install for my new Mac a few years ago and discovered how massive it was. LaTeX is almost as big as the entire operating system disk! What on earth is in there?

Vast numbers of packages to do just about anything you could possibly want.....

Things like inserting graphics with text flowing around them (picins), or document classes for resumes,or textpos (for absolute text positioning), or......

Basically you have nearly two thousand such packages in TexLive......

Re: The price of a messy codebase: No LaTeX on the iPad

#13

Post by mgualt » Tue, Nov 22, 2011, 7:00 AM UTC

Hear, hear! This post provides a perfect example of the utter failure of software engineering in the real world. I am reminded of it every time I try to install software, with all the ridiculous dependencies and multiple versions. Instead of addressing the serious foundational issues facing software development and architecture, the geniuses are busy inventing the latest, greatest programming language, creating even more problems.

Computer science and engineering departments should use these situations to train their students.

Re: The price of a messy codebase: No LaTeX on the iPad

#14

Post by jorleif » Tue, Nov 22, 2011, 7:01 AM UTC

nhoss2 wrote: post #3

how about making an app that just stores the .tex files, and to convert them to pdf or something, the .tex file gets sent to a server

This is an interesting solution, because the problem is that the original codebase is messy and therefore not portable. It seems to happen to most software as it ages.

Putting it on a server makes the architecture more robust against messy code (and changes in programming languages and environments), because pieces can be changed independently.

Re: The price of a messy codebase: No LaTeX on the iPad

#15

Post by jsilence » Tue, Nov 22, 2011, 7:04 AM UTC

"iPad is the most beautiful platform out there"

Sorry, but I fail to understand, why any serious TeX-Head would say that. The platform is crippled and your problem shows it. You are ranting in the wrong direction.

-jsl

Re: The price of a messy codebase: No LaTeX on the iPad

#16

Post by retrogradeorbit » Tue, Nov 22, 2011, 7:05 AM UTC

This is a total 'Bed of Procrustes' argument. In order to deal with the problem of this ONE device and in particular the App Store guidelines, you want to cut off the legs of the source code.

Re: The price of a messy codebase: No LaTeX on the iPad

#17

Post by tomrod » Tue, Nov 22, 2011, 7:07 AM UTC

Does no one use ScribTeX? Check it out: http://www.scribtex.com/

Re: The price of a messy codebase: No LaTeX on the iPad

#18

Post by riffraff » Tue, Nov 22, 2011, 7:11 AM UTC

brianobush wrote: post #6

nhoss2 wrote: post #3

how about making an app that just stores the .tex files, and to convert them to pdf or something, the .tex file gets sent to a server

that doesn't solve the OP is really talking about, it merely moves it around.

why not? As I understand it, it would, as there would be no need to port (La)Tex to anything: just deploy it in a jailed environment on the server, and the thing you need to have on the ipad is a text editor and a pdf viewer.

It does not solve the problem of writing TeX on an iPad offline, obviously.

Re: The price of a messy codebase: No LaTeX on the iPad

#19

Post by gst » Tue, Nov 22, 2011, 7:12 AM UTC

"I can see no choice other than starting from scratch."

Then good luck! Please post again once you've finished the rewrite.

Re: The price of a messy codebase: No LaTeX on the iPad

#20

Post by kenjackson » Tue, Nov 22, 2011, 7:14 AM UTC

einhverfr wrote: post #9

LaTeX can't be 4GB. I think it is being confused with TexLive? You don't need all of TexLive to make LaTeX documents....

There certainly must exist some reasonable snapshot that is less than 4GB as I ran Tex on a computer with less than a 1GB HD in the distant past -- and it didn't consume most of the HD at the time.