![]() ![]() So as I approached the iPad Pro with the aim of research and writing, I suspected that I would have to move to yet another new platform if I were to actually use it as an MacBook Pro replacement. I have used BibTex in conjunction with pdfLaTeX for most of my writing, including my dissertation work, but only because I hate word processors, love the beautiful type-setting of LaTex2e, and actually enjoy the mark-up side of using it. ![]() I moved on to other resources that really only accomplished the citation management function that I learned to appreciate in Ibidem: EndNote, BookEnds, Sente, Zotero, BibTex, in that order. EndNote probably took most of their niche. That suite to tools has since been updated but fell out of use by me and I suspect by a great many others as well as it neglected to keep pace with the industry. When the Note Bene suite of tools for academic writing first crossed my workflow back in 2006 or so, I was stunned that there was a resource that not only provided a word processor that allowed me to (thankfully) move off of MS Word, but managed and formatted my citations (Ibidem), and-now this really astounded me-offered a customizable database (Orbis) in which all my research articles and primary texts could be deposited and searched. CommentsĬomments are sent directly to me and may or may not be posted for display on this page.First, some backstory. This experience only reminds me of how powerful emacs and org-mode truly are.Įditing raw Beamer by hand is such a pain when compared with the simple elegance of org structured documents. I truly had never considered a commercial iPad app to be able to rival all of that.ĭespite such a positive experience, I am still hesitant to achieve my entire workflow on the iPad. I have always considered the TeX ecosystem to be strongly tied to Unix, a proper filesystem, and thousands of hours of effort from a vast community of folks. TexPad is easy to use, mostly it just works. Here the options of the images I had already tried to import appeared.Īnd then, my slide deck built completely. No where in the file browser could the image files be seen, yet when I tried to import again the app claimed that “a file with that name already exists.”įinally, I found a different button for adding a image to the project (rather than just importing the file to TexPad). I created a folder and tried to “add” images within it. The only hiccups I had were around image importing. The compiling time was quick enough (at least for 20 slides or so) and seemed to rival that of my desktop iMac.Īdding my Beamer style to the project worked as expected, though it did try to compile a pdf from the style file. The TexPad app has a decent editor, with built-in fonts and color theme options. I spent the next 40 minutes anxiously watching the download bar as it fetched the prerequisite packages (or bundles as TexPad calls them), boarded my flight, and entered airplane mode. I tried to compile and realized that I still needed to download core Tex packages. My existing slides and Beamer template were sitting in web-accessible git repos and were easily pasted into the app. So, being down to the wire (with only an hour or so before I boarded and lost internet), I made the leap and purchased TexPad. Unfortunately, I found that my desktop machine, sitting back in my office, was turned off. My slides (in Beamer) were over due and I had planned to SSH into a “real” computer to work on them. I was sitting at the airport with just my iPad heading off on a business trip where I would have to give a short presentation. Then, one Monday I found myself in a bit of a predicament. Ho hum, I didn’t really want to pay… but my interest was piqued in the fact that it was a stand-alone app that could compile LaTeX and Beamer. Next month I’ll have a more detailed post about some of the apps I’ve found and my current iPad setup.įor a long time the only barrier to using my iPad instead of a laptop on travel was one very specific use case: I wanted to be able to build TeX documents on an airplane (i.e., without an internet connection).Ī friend of mine said “surely there must be a decent app” and immediately found TexPad for $20. It was at the start of my journey towards replacing my laptop with an iPad as my only work device while on travel. ![]()
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