LaTeX and iPhone/iPad « PhilTeX Forums

PhilTeX Forums » Welcome to PhilTeX Forums!

LaTeX and iPhone/iPad

(8 posts)

Anthony Adrian
Member

Hello all,

Does any one have a set of apps for either the iPhone or iPad which you find useful for LaTeXing? On my iPhone, I have "LaTeX Help" which a laundry list of symbols and the codes needed to input them, "PlainText" which is a very simple plain text editor which syncs up to..."Dropbox"cloud space.

So, that's my LaTeX kit that I have going on my phone. I don't know that it's particularly useful, though. There hasn't been much occasion to write extensive sections on PlainText, though it's been nice to play around with so far.

What do you use?

Posted 1 year ago #
Kevin Klement
Key Master

I'm not an Apple fan, and don't have an iPad or iPhone and never will.

However, you might be interested in Peter Smith's "One Logician's iPad" page. He also mentions a program called TeX Touch, which is a LaTeX code editor for the iPad. Obviously I have no first hand knowledge of such things.

Personally, I think what I would do if I had an iPad would be to use VNC or perhaps just SSH to connect to my Work Computer, which I always leave running and online, and just do my LaTeXing with my normal software on my desktop. VNC can be kind of slow, but if you're a command-line geek and have access to a good text-mode editor like vim or emacs, LaTeXing over SSH is pretty easy.

But I'm on oddball who likes real keyboards. <rant>Oh, and not supporting evil corporations who support censorship, rampant litigation, and threats against the open source community who designed half their operating system.</rant>

Posted 1 year ago #
Charlie Tanksley
Key Master

I won't explicitly counter Kevin's anti-Apple rant with praise of all things Apple, but please know that I want to. ;)

I can't imagine doing any actual editing on my phone. I do use iBooks to read documentation sometimes (that I just get from online). The only iPhone app I use that is LaTeX related is the iPhone version of Detexify (here is the link to the app in iTunes: Detexify app. This can come in handy for me if I can't remember a symbol, though I'll admit that the web app is every bit as useful and might be faster.

One other app I find particularly useful: Reeder for reading RSS feeds. This gives me a chance to read Kevin and Seamus's posts over at PhilTeX on the go. Very handy.

Posted 1 year ago #
Chris E
Member

I don't have an iPad either, but it seems to me there's an relatively straightforward way to process TeX from it, given a few tools and a computer that stays on (or is set to wake up at acceptable intervals):

Use one of the text editors on iPad to save to a special folder in your Dropbox (or similar service). It will immediately sync to your computer. Then, on your computer, have the application Hazel watching that folder for files ending in .tex. Tell Hazel that when it sees a .tex file to run PDFTeX or latexmk or whatever you want on it. (That's super-easy in Hazel, but you could rig up the same for free using Folder Actions and Automator). Hazel will happily move the resulting PDF elsewhere if you want, or make back-ups, etc.

Open the PDF on your iPad and Voilá, LaTeX "on" iPad, yeah?

Posted 1 year ago #
Kevin Klement
Key Master
I think Chris's idea is really fantastic. A really good way to solve the problem, especially if you don't have a home SSH/VNC server or static IP. Dropbox is great for these kinds of things.

But the mention of Hazel brings to the fore one of the things that most annoys me about the commercial software world. There are so many parasites trying to extract money from you. That Hazel program costs $22. I guess compared to some of the scams I've seen that's relatively inexpensive. But it's still unconscionable when you consider that you can replicate its functionality with a 10-line bash script.

Here's one I wrote in two minutes:
```
  #!/bin/bash
  cd "$HOME/Dropbox/auto-latex"
  while true ; do
      for file in *.tex ; do
          if [ "$file" -nt ".lastcheck" ] ; then
               pdflatex -synctex=1 -interaction=nonstopmode "$file" 
          fi
       done
       touch ".lastcheck"
       sleep 5
  done
```
Create a folder under your Dropbox folder called "auto-latex". Then run this script, and leave it running on your main computer while it's connected to the internet and Dropbox is syncing. Every five seconds it checks that folder for any new or edited .tex files, and if it finds them, runs pdflatex on them. Obviously, this could be tweaked in many ways, and for something more robust you could use a cron job instead, etc.

So what are you paying for with Hazel? I'm sure they provide a nice GUI interface, but I'd be willing to bet that half the coding went in to checking to see if the 14 day trial is over and annoying you and/or disabling it if it is. Unfortunately, in the closed, app-store-central world that Apple wants us to live in, stuff like that will the norm rather than the exception. With iPhones and iPads, I bet that half the software costs are dedicated to ways of locking them down and making them less functional than they would otherwise be.

Charlie, did you have to pay for Reeder, for example? Surely you could get the same thing for free with Google Reader in a web browser. I'm pretty sure they have it set up to detect that you're using a mobile browser and format appropriately.

But I really don't mean to get all preachy here. Chris's idea is really a nice one. I just wanted to point out that there are free ways of implementing it. (Well, assuming that the Dropbox client and text editor are free. It would be pretty sad if you couldn't get a free text editor on Apple devices, but I don't know.)
Posted 1 year ago #
Chris E
Member

It's thoughtful of you to include a script, Kevin. That means there are several solutions for TeX on Dropbox-capable devices without TeX-installations ... like my own Droid phone.

Already partway there with LaTeX, I can see the appeal of learning Bash to run such scripts, especially if I were only using one of them. Still, with the Hazel application, I've got some hundreds of them running all the time, and an interface for easily starting them, stopping them, duplicating them, etc.

One of my favorite, relevant things to do with such rules is automatically clean TeX junk out of certain folders a certain number of hours after I've modified them. So, after a day or so, .log, .blg, .fdb_latexmk, .aux, .out, and .synctex.gz files automatically disappear, while they would otherwise clutter up any folder I have my writing in. I also have rules for saving time-stamped versions of important documents I'm working on to folders on Dropbox, as a backup beyond my regular backups.

Less relevant things I use it for include moving any image or URL I drag to the desktop to specified non-Desktop folders after certain intervals, importing any audio in my Downloads folder into iTunes, etc.

For me, personally, a GUI for that is worth $22 and not a scam, as an alternative to learning to script and deploy scripts not just well enough to do things but also well enough to know that I'm not messing anything else up by using them -- a pretty substantial investment of time that may happen someday, but not anytime soon. Neat script, though; I'll save that!

Posted 1 year ago #
Kevin Klement
Key Master

I only chose a BASH script because it's cross-platform. I'm sure you get $22 of worth out it, and I'm certainly not criticizing you; the criticism is of those who would ask people to pay for something their computer can for all intents and purposes already do, and the programming of which is trivial. It just seems petty. It's just the culture that bothers me. Here is something relatively simple; rather than generating community based general purpose solutions, they begrudge their users relatively basic abilities until they pony up $22, or learn to write their own scripts.

It's as if a student was already paying tuition to be in my class came to me after class and had a question related to, but not actually covered in, my lecture. I know the answer and it would only take 20 seconds to give it, but suppose I insisted on being paid extra to tell that person. It doesn't matter if that person really wants to know the answer and doesn't mind paying me -- that level of commercialism simply bothers me as a human being who believes in helping others. But maybe that's just how Capitalism works, and I've been in academia too long.

I'm surprised Mac doesn't come with a scheduler tool. Most linux distros come with one pre-installed, and if they don't, there are at least 25 free, open source GUI schedulding tools you can set up. Anyway, there probably are free scheduling tools for mac. Cronnix seems to be one. I've never used it of course, so I can't vouch for it. Perhaps it just handles the scheduling part, and you'd still need to write the script it schedules. But I'd be happy to whip up a BASH quick script for removing LaTeX auxiliary files if they're older than five hours old. That wouldn't be too tough. Maybe Applescript would be easier? I don't know anything about Applescript.

You seem to gain a level of confidence from using third party tools. I guess I'm the opposite. I trust a script I wrote myself and know exactly what it does more than something I paid for. Maybe I'm cynical though, after dealing with garbage snuck into most paid Windows programs for years. It's the paradox of open source. Open source programs can't hide garbage, and free programs don't have a motivation to. Commercial software on the other hand...

Posted 1 year ago #
Anthony Adrian
Member

Thanks for the link, Kevin. That's a really interesting setup for the iPad. I should note that this thread was really just to find out what I could do LaTeX-wise on my iPhone. I don't own an iPad, but I would think that those apps mentioned would be much more helpful on an iPad than on the phone.

Chris E, what a great idea! If I ever try to typeset on my phone, I will definitely give that method a whirl.

Posted 1 year ago #
cocochen
Member

I won't explicitly counter Kevin's anti-Apple rant with praise of all things Apple, but please know that I want to. ;)

I can't imagine doing any actual editing on my phone. I do use iBooks to read documentation sometimes (that I just get from online). The only iPhone app I use that is LaTeX related is the iPhone version of Detexify (here is the link to the app in iTunes: Detexify app. This can come in handy for me if I can't remember a symbol, though I'll admit that the web app is every bit as useful and might be faster.

One other app I find particularly useful: Reeder for reading RSS feeds. This gives me a chance to read Kevin and Seamus's posts over at PhilTeX on the go. Very handy.

Posted 1 year ago #
undertake
Member

I insisted on being paid extra to tell that person. It doesn't matter if that person really wants to know the answer and doesn't mind paying me -- that level of commercialism simply bothers me as a human being who believes in helping others. But maybe that's just how Capitalism works, and I've been in academia too long.

iPad2 case iPad 2 case ipad2 Cables

Posted 11 months ago #
Gallamore
Member

Thanks for the link, Kevin. That's a really interesting setup for the iPad.ipad2 keyboard cases ipad2 keyboard dock ipad 2 keyboard

Posted 11 months ago #
Kavanaugh
Member

Thanks for the link, Kevin. That's a really interesting setup for the iPad. I should note that this thread was really just to find out what I could do LaTeX-wise on my iPhone. I don't own an iPad

ipad 2 Chargers ipad 2 covers ipad 2 stand cases

Posted 11 months ago #
Scheibner
Member

Use one of the text editors on iPad to save to a special folder in your Dropbox (or similar service). It will immediately sync to your computer. Then, on your computer, have the application Hazel watching that folder for files ending in .tex. Tell Hazel that when it sees a .tex file to run PDFTeX or latexmk or whatever you want on it. (That's super-easy in Hazel, but you could rig up the same for free using Folder Actions and Automator).

ipad 2 stand ipad 2 wireless keyboard ipad 2 keyboard case

Posted 11 months ago #
Chris E
Member

note to editors, since there's no flagging function: the previous post by Scheibner (which is entirely a quote of my post) is linkspam. Feel free to delete my message with it.

Posted 11 months ago #