191–200 of 247 posts
The iPad is made for content consumption, not creation. Trying to write TeX (or any kind of markup) with a virtual keyboard sounds horrific.
one can use the ipad with a real keyboard.
What I would like to run on the iPad, on the other hand, is a TeX-syntax-aware, document-validating editor that knows how to consume a rendering web service that runs on a Real Computer.
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Nobody uses (Knuth's) TeX anymore. They use PDFTeX, XeTeX and LuaTeX. None of these are as stable as TeX, but in practice a whole lot better than most other software I use.
All of these versions of TeX are just extensions of the original TeX. The core Knuth's code is still used in each one of them. The stability comes from the core, not just from the work of pdftex, xetex and luatex developers.
The price of using an iPad: No LaTex.
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> For whatever reason, they cannot allow applications to use the existing capabilities of the underlying OS. This goes against the Unix mindset; of course there will be unpleasant consequences, but one cannot hold Unix mindset responsible for these. Using the native capabilities of the OS in the sense you mean - allowing TeX to use its ancient, hideous bitmap font system, goes against: - Unix philisophy - do one thin…
You forgot my favorite TeX non-feature: completely uninformative error messages! All kidding aside, I use (La)TeX almost every day and it's bulletproof. It's not going anywhere, so you might as well learn to love it, worts and all.
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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.
Are you implying that qmail and tex don't have actual users? The point those packages make is that some problems can have a solution that lasts years or decades instead of mere months.
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Nope, the professor was requesting that you use the standard typesetting software. Some of your classmates might have to write many papers, and hence it's good that they start learning.
Apparently. It's a shame that researchers hae to use such software. Probably part of why research is so conservative and slow. Why not a funky html "paper"? With interactive formulae, clickable links (hey, wasn't PageRank based on references? Maybe time to turn that around) to references. Most important, a clickable link to an academic profile.
And if you're including mathematical formulae, which scientific academia will do, HTML is rubbish for formulae.
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Here comes the problem: Apple requires it to be a single binary, distributed once. You can't install packages the LaTeX ways should you want to, so you have to bundle most (if not all) packages into the single binary.
What about in-app purchases? Why not a set of free in-app "purchase" options for large sets of these packages?