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

#141

Post by gurkendoktor » Tue, Nov 22, 2011, 2:14 PM UTC

gphil wrote: post #134

Wouldn't it be possible to just write a front end for the iPad, and run a LaTeX service in the cloud? I think this would be by far the easiest way to do it, and I don't think it's really optimal to do all the LaTeX stuff client-side on limited hardware and battery anyway.

I am sure many papers have been written in LaTeX on machines slower than the iPad, and on laptops with less capable batteries. I don't see a reason why this would be unreasonable to do on the client (except for reasons mentioned in the article, of course).

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

#142

Post by lukeschlather » Tue, Nov 22, 2011, 2:14 PM UTC

Has Apple started allowing non-trivial Turing complete languages into the App store now? Unless I'm mistaken LaTeX would be rejected out of hand no matter how much you clean it up because it is an interpreter.

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

#143

Post by noahl » Tue, Nov 22, 2011, 2:15 PM UTC

This rewrite has already been done. See http://www.texmacs.org/

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

#144

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Nov 22, 2011, 2:16 PM UTC

lukeschlather wrote: post #142

Has Apple started allowing non-trivial Turing complete languages into the App store now? Unless I'm mistaken LaTeX would be rejected out of hand no matter how much you clean it up because it is an interpreter.

[deleted]

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

#145

Post by RBerenguel » Tue, Nov 22, 2011, 2:18 PM UTC

roel_v wrote: post #114

gjm11 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think Donald Knuth has made a career for himself out of being able to right 'bug free code'? Really? He's made a career for himself out of being an extremely creative computer scientist and writing outstandingly scholarly books about programming. Far from marketing himself as producing bug-free code, he has published articles entirely devoted to the history of bugs found in his software. (As for the bits that tur…

Of course not, it's hyperbole to illustrate the point. In the specific cases of Qmail and TeX, the 'bug free' aspect of it however is overblown and a marketing gimmick. It's not that hard (given enough time) to make something bug free, it's a whole different thing when the software needs to evolve at the same time to meet the (changing and expanding) requirements of actual users.

TeX wasn't born in a night and suddenly appear in binary form. Knuth worked a hell lot to make it clean, make it work and make it fast. At least, for when he wrote it. Go and read The TeXbook

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

#146

Post by RBerenguel » Tue, Nov 22, 2011, 2:20 PM UTC

nixy wrote: post #132

What about a LaTeX cloud service with a thin iPad client?

TeXTouch offers somewhat close to this.

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

#147

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Nov 22, 2011, 2:21 PM UTC

iqster wrote: post #120

shaggyfrog wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Virtual machines are generally prohibited by the guidelines as well. (Exceptions exist for things like script interpreters, which need to be present for some games to run, e.g. Lua.)

I never understood the exception for game engines (ala Lua). Why are those okay but other VMs not okay (from Apple's perspective, of course)?

[deleted]

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

#148

Post by RBerenguel » Tue, Nov 22, 2011, 2:21 PM UTC

super_mario wrote: post #112

I question the basic premise here. iPad is not meant for content creating or document typesetting, it's meant for content consumption. If you want to do anything that looks remotely like work you don't want to use iDevice for it.

I digress. I write in my iPad, mostly for my blog or free-form, with a bluetooth keyboard. Not perfect for TeX, but using iSSH against the cloud works quite well.

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

#149

Post by omaranto » Tue, Nov 22, 2011, 2:25 PM UTC

gphil wrote: post #134

Wouldn't it be possible to just write a front end for the iPad, and run a LaTeX service in the cloud? I think this would be by far the easiest way to do it, and I don't think it's really optimal to do all the LaTeX stuff client-side on limited hardware and battery anyway.

Of course it's possible and desirable so someone has already done it: http://itunes.apple.com/en/app/tex-touch/id377627321?mt=8

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

#150

Post by super_mario » Tue, Nov 22, 2011, 2:33 PM UTC

swombat wrote: post #121

super_mario wrote: post #112

I question the basic premise here. iPad is not meant for content creating or document typesetting, it's meant for content consumption. If you want to do anything that looks remotely like work you don't want to use iDevice for it.

That's right - that's why Apple released stuff like GarageBand, Pages, Keynote, Numbers and iMovie for the iPad - so that people would not use all this content-creation software to create content. Oh wait.

Yeah I have all those app on my iPhone 4. iMove is useful if I'm out and about and want to trim and upload a video to facebook etc (these apps should really be shipped with the OS), but that's far cry from actual work or real video editing.

The other applications pages, numbers, keynote are severely limited, and really slow and difficult to use. They are OK for viewing documents created elsewhere, but not so much for creating new one.