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Emacs on an iPad

andschwa.com

101–110 of 113 posts

Re: Emacs on an iPad

#101
post #17

I tried using Blink shell for a while and it was ok, but when my iPad screen broke I got a Thinkpad X280 as a replacement. For emacs, programming and a lot of other things it's way better. I've just spent some time in KiCAD this evening, I couldn't do that on an iPad. Plus if something breaks it's way easier to get parts, a new screen is under $100 and I can install it myself without any tools.

You can replace the screen with just your bare hands, not even a screwdriver required?

The front bezel is clipped in, it's quite hard to detach, but can be carefully removed, and then the screen just sits behind with a eDP connector. Quite a contrast to an iPad.

Re: Emacs on an iPad

#102
post #86
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

Two different licenses. They've had an issue with GPLv3 since it started to be the default license of most GNU coreutils and their other programs. That's why Bash was never updated for so long.

The App Store would not reject an app just because its source was under the GPL. It's the other way around: it's the FSF who says that Apple's terms don't allow full compliance with the GPL.

Re: Emacs on an iPad

#103
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no designer will ever again wield the power and influence at Apple he abused. Besides whoever is in charge of designing MacOS.

macOS plays second fiddle to iOS at Apple. Ive was Chief Design Officer. Now check Apple's Leadership page ( https://www.apple.com/leadership/ ). Design is nowhere to be found on it. It had temporarily been assigned to HR chief Deirdre O'Brien, no more, and Design co-chiefs Alan Dye and Evans Hankey report to the COO Jeff Williams, a.k.a. the Department of Everything Else. It's not a surprise both Dye and Hankey are…

Sounds like you're taking a realistic stance here, so I won't tear you to shreds. Like you said, Apple's hardware is improving objectively so it's not a terrible thing. For years though, I've been more bothered by gimped software than gimped hardware.

Guess that means I shouldn't be in the Apple ecosystem, which is fine by me I suppose.

Re: Emacs on an iPad

#104
post #80

Termux on my $95 Kindle Fire is more useful than anything I’ve yet encountered on iPadOS simply because of the execrable keyboard options available on the iPad. There are great prices on wonderful M1 iPads right now, and I love my MacBook Air, so I got this year’s iPad Air. You must be joking. After hours of futility, I am forced to accept that Apple still has no API for adding Control Escape arrow keys to keyboard a…

Map esc to caps lock with your terminal emulator. That’s what I do.

Thanks, that's possible.

But my real gripe is the lack of these keys in an onscreen keyboard that I could use in Safari.

Online, web-hosted VS Code (via GitHub dot-dev, in my case), and Jupyter notebooks via CoLab or local hosted -- they are nice to have, but the editor library in Jupyter seems to map each word of code in its own text field. You can't use the usual iOS/iPadOS touch editing features, it's impossible to select a line of code... And on and on.

It doesn't sound like it would be such a big deal but it's a show-stopper. "Type F1 for the Command Palette" -- aaargh!

Re: Emacs on an iPad

#105

The M1 on the Mac unintentionally killed iPad as laptop replacement for a lot of people. Around 2015-2019, Macs were terrible. They overheated, theottled and had loud fans. At the same time, the iPad Pro was dead silent, lighter, faster and had better battery life. Today, the M1 MacBook Air gets all those goodies and you get a nice keyboard and a capable OS. The battery life is also twice as long as an iPad Pro. Appl…

Apple was deliberately putting bad cooling into those laptops because they had other priorities I don't understand. So I suppose they could always make the cooling on their new laptops even worse, and then the iPad would pull "ahead".

> Apple was deliberately putting bad cooling into those laptops because they had other priorities I don't understand

There’s a rumor that was because Intel promised every year 10nm chips, which they ultimately postponed every year. MacBooks chassis were designed for the promised thermal advantages which have never been delivered.

Re: Emacs on an iPad

#107

The M1 on the Mac unintentionally killed iPad as laptop replacement for a lot of people. Around 2015-2019, Macs were terrible. They overheated, theottled and had loud fans. At the same time, the iPad Pro was dead silent, lighter, faster and had better battery life. Today, the M1 MacBook Air gets all those goodies and you get a nice keyboard and a capable OS. The battery life is also twice as long as an iPad Pro. Appl…

> Around 2015-2019, Macs were terrible. They overheated, theottled and had loud fans. At the same time, the iPad Pro was dead silent, lighter, faster and had better battery life. This is more of a PEBKAC problem than you realize, iPads are only "faster" because they do a better job of managing background tasks.

No. The iPads of the time beat the Macs in performance and efficiency.

Re: Emacs on an iPad

#108
post #70
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment made my week, I've been looking for a way to run Emacs (not remotely) on my iPad Pro since buying it in 2020. To confirm I just downloaded iSH and installed Emacs 27.2 (i586-alpine-linux-musl build) successfully. Now lets see what devilish compromises I need to make on keybindings..

How to handle alt key. Most even ish just give you ctrl key

Terminals don’t really have a concept of an alt key. Most map it to meta which you can get by tapping ⎋.

Re: Emacs on an iPad

#109
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two different licenses. They've had an issue with GPLv3 since it started to be the default license of most GNU coreutils and their other programs. That's why Bash was never updated for so long.

The App Store would not reject an app just because its source was under the GPL. It's the other way around: it's the FSF who says that Apple's terms don't allow full compliance with the GPL.

Yeah I think you are right.

Re: Emacs on an iPad

#110
post #80

Termux on my $95 Kindle Fire is more useful than anything I’ve yet encountered on iPadOS simply because of the execrable keyboard options available on the iPad. There are great prices on wonderful M1 iPads right now, and I love my MacBook Air, so I got this year’s iPad Air. You must be joking. After hours of futility, I am forced to accept that Apple still has no API for adding Control Escape arrow keys to keyboard a…

A day after my rant:

I noticed that I still use Panic Software's "Coda" on my 10-year-old iPad 4, and the terminal, editor, and keyboard design choices are the best I've found for iOS.

And that said, I wanted to call out that on Android, the Termux environment is native, local Linux (userland on Android). I use it for SSH, sure, but I also use it for everything else. Last night I tried some Zsh, FORTRAN, GCC, and Python. All on-device. Performance on my cheap Kindle Fire HD is actually better experience than attempting to use a web browser. Android is old; newer versions may restrict Termux functionality.

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