We need to mount the disk and install it as a portable distribution. For TeX Live 2020 we need texlive2020-20200406.iso from a mirror. To obtain an older version of TeX Live, we need the old disk image from the historic archive. So the best way to get full PDFLaTeX working offline on iPad is to load only the part of TeX Live useful for TeX Writer, as described below.Īs of August 2022, TeX Writer still ships with TeX Live 2020 distribution released on 06 April 2020, which has shown incompatibility with newer packages, such as l3kernel and bibtex. And due to the less than robust file system on iPadOS, that amount of files often crash the Files app. Since only PDFLaTeX related files can be used by TeX Writer, this would waste a lot of storage on iPad. Theoretically, we can put the entirety of TeX Live into it. We just need to create a new folder texmf-local and copy the packages we want into it. However, the best thing is that it allows users to pre-load any packages, fonts, and etc. When typesetting a document that requires additional packages, it downloads the required packages dynamically from CTAN to its caches. For example, the editor draws inspirations from Emacs and customisation requires editing a plain text configuration file.Īfter installing TeX Writer, it has already shipped a minimal TeX Live distribution with it. The only thing that probably holds some people back from TeX Writer is that it’s more like an app written for developers. Moreover, it has a transparent package management solution, i.e., the same old way as managing any files by showing the entire directory. It can show tex and PDF simultaneously, with horizontal split in landscape and vertical split in portrait orientation. It has tons of customisation and scripting capabilities. It supports multitasking technology on iPad perfectly. It has a solid file manager, with Files app integration. Although there is one competitor on iPadOS with offline typesetting capabilities, namely Texpad, TeX Writer excels in almost every way. We can at least get full PDFLaTeX working on iPadOS, with the help of TeX Writer. It turns out that it’s not possible to install a full TeX Live. However, it is not obvious how we can bring TeX Live onto iPadOS 2. To get a barebone workable experience for writing and typesetting in LaTeX, a LaTeX distribution, e.g., TeX Live is of course needed. Setup Offline PDFLaTeX Compiler – TeX Writer I will describe both the setup and the workflow in the following sections. The apps involved are TeX Writer, Textastic, and Working Copy 1. After fiddling with all the relevant apps that I could find, even including those remotely relevant ones, I think I finally established an optimal workflow. The reasons are mostly the lack of software documentations and the lack of research in this area. Yet it’s not a trivial matter to get it going smoothly on iPad. In particular, writing and typesetting LaTeX are essential for academics in mathematics related areas. So, I needed to figure out an academic workflow on iPad by myself. There is little to be found from academics, which is kind of to be expected from the most introvert group of people in the world. However, the workflows are mostly all from professional bloggers, podcasters, programmers and artists. There are quite a lot online resources covering the usage of iPad as a primary device. Albeit this resort has been shrinking constantly as I get more competent in utilising the power of the iPad. The PC also serves as the last resort for things that the iPad is just incapable of doing. While the PC is a fantastic powerhorse, it has mostly been used as a dedicated gaming machine. I’ve put more love in it than the PC that costs three times more. I have been using an iPad Pro as my main computing device for over two years now. Since then, I’ve (mostly) been a happy owner of the iPad. So I sold it and used the money to get an iPad Pro 10.5 (WiFi model with 256GB storage). Or maybe I just wanted to get rid of it and play with some new toys. I felt that it was a bit heavy for only that kind of usage. I was still hanging around with my MacBook, mainly as a portable device for media consumption and academic work. In 2017 I finally decided to build a desktop PC, partly to fullfil some of my craftsman’s desire, and partly to play some graphics intensive games. After years of service, it became a bit unsatisfying in terms of performance. I was a proud owner of the 15″ MacBook Pro Retina from 2013.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |