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

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

#151

Post by tammer »

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.

A cloud service would be nice for a pretty frontend, but isn't at all necessary. iSSH + Dropbox + home server with full LaTeX installation = typography-fu.

Many people seem to think that tablets functioning as "laptop replacements" means duplicating all laptop functionality on tablet hardware. I take "replacement" to it's full meaning, in that a tablet allows you to develop on a server while making no compromise on portability.

If you wants to carry around the full LaTeX installation, you need a laptop. If you want a laptop replacement, you can't expect to not replace your way of working.

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

#152

Post by AkThhhpppt »

Rajiv_N wrote: post #40

Maybe we should let LaTex be the way it is now and focus instead on generating better HTML authoring tools. With eBooks becoming more popular, there is certainly a need for such tools. While I understand HTML is no match for the power of LaTex currently, we need to think ahead and maybe help to create a platform for the future rather than getting bogged down by technologies of the past.

Um.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX2HTML

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

#153

Post by omaranto »

gmac wrote: post #89
EdiX wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * You only need one binary to work with TeX. Either PDFTeX or LuaTeX. All other binaries are just glue code (for example to generate missing Metafont fonts, but who wants them these days anyway? A lot of TeX uses Computer Modern to typeset the body (a metafont font) and I don't think I have ever see a TeX document that doesn't use Computer Modern or Euler (another metafont font) for equation typesetting. I also won…

Yep, it always surprises me how few people change off the default Computer Modern -- which I find really spindly and ugly -- given that a single \usepackage{...} will give you a beautiful Palatino, for example. I sometimes suspect they're just wanting to hit me in the face with the fact that they're LaTeX users...

Palatino for text is fine, but what math fonts go well with it? I think them main reason I use Computer Modern is that the math and text fonts look so good together.

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

#155

Post by jen_h »

One real issue is that most users' LaTeX environments are highly customized and tweaked to our own liking. Even if it weren't absolutely nuts to put every-package-and-extension-known-to-man inside a iOS binary, it still wouldn't be right. Like, what if I want LaTeX2HTML (I've never not had to highly tweak this)? What about my snazzy custom fonts? That bibliography style that only one journal accepts and requires these crufty old stys from 2.09?

If I needed LaTeX on a daily, here's what I would do:

1. Install DropBox on my mobile device and a designated "build" box--maybe just your home computer or an EC2 micro.

2. Set up Jenkins on a box that's got your favorite LaTeX environment and create a job that takes your LaTeX source files, builds and outputs your desired formats and pops them into an output folder you created on DropBox.

3. Set a build trigger that runs a build every time you touch a specific "ready to build" file.

4. Edit and write LaTeX source files on your mobile device using an app that syncs with DropBox like PlainText.

5. Increment something in your "build trigger" file.

6. Et voila, check the DropBox app on your mobile device for output and log files. :)

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

#156

Post by pnathan »

gmac wrote: post #89
EdiX wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * You only need one binary to work with TeX. Either PDFTeX or LuaTeX. All other binaries are just glue code (for example to generate missing Metafont fonts, but who wants them these days anyway? A lot of TeX uses Computer Modern to typeset the body (a metafont font) and I don't think I have ever see a TeX document that doesn't use Computer Modern or Euler (another metafont font) for equation typesetting. I also won…

Yep, it always surprises me how few people change off the default Computer Modern -- which I find really spindly and ugly -- given that a single \usepackage{...} will give you a beautiful Palatino, for example. I sometimes suspect they're just wanting to hit me in the face with the fact that they're LaTeX users...

I personally love Computer Modern. I consider it beautiful and one of the most pleasing fonts I have ever encountered.

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

#157

Post by maximusprime »

jsilence wrote: post #87
maximusprime wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see any reason why LaTeX should be shelling out to bash. And having a mish-mash of loads of different languages creates unmaintainable bloatware.

I don't see any reason why it should _not_ shell out to bash. TeX/LaTeX was developed in a UNIX environment, which has the explicit philosophy of "the tool box with lots of little tools which do whatever little they do extremely good". The iOS Philosophy of "It has to be one binary app" resembles the philosophy of Windows Programs. Big single programs with lots of functionality unter one big GUI. How can anyone reall…

True, it's a different philosophy.

Personally, I'm in the camp of "rely on as little as you can". This includes not shelling out to bash unless you really really really can't achieve the same thing with a bit of more code. Apart from making the app less portable, more bug prone, less maintainable etc, it's just ugly.

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

#158

Post by magice »

This article is a proof of the stupidity, ignorance, and general jerkiness of an Apple user. It's like, the world must resolve around some standards set by Apple because it fails to deliver a system that actually works. Oh, and never mind that the stupid guy never understands the reason why the code base is set up as it is.

All in all, here is my opinion: who ever upvote this should feel ashame of yourself for wasting everyone's real-estate on this stupid rant.

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

#159

Post by HnNoPassMailer »

rmc wrote: post #99
HnNoPassMailer wrote: post #43

I thought Latex was dead? It's a system I see no one ever use. With right, as it's as horrible as a doc system can get.

LaTeX is still massively used to typeset and print up academic papers.

I had to write a paper with it. I found it so horrible that I ended up not writing the paper (on a very interesting topic) and failed class. I just assumed the professor was nutty and kept onto some weird niche software.

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

#160

Post by coliveira »

The size of the distribution has nothing to do with TeX itself, but with the huge amount of fonts, style files, and other configuration files used to typeset modern documents on desktop systems. TeX itself is very self contained and already runs on most architectures you can think of. The author's problem is that he is trying to port to a mobile device a distribution that was created for UNIX systems.
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