
LaTeX Workflow on iPad - SuperTachyon
https://supertachyon.wordpress.com/2019/06/13/37/
======
drej
I was an early adopter, I got an iPad back in the summer of 2010 and have used
various models ever since. I've read quite a few of these "replacing a laptop
with an iPad" articles and pretty much all of them involve a lot of bending
over backwards to make it all work.

I've tried it a few times and it's not just worth it (to me). What I do
instead is that I embrace the platform for what it is and don't do any of this
remote machine kung fu to mimick a real computer. What I do instead is that I
setup applications that sync data through the cloud, so that I can do draft
work on my iPad (mostly text, some very light programming), but I never worry
about runtimes, compilation etc. Ever since I stopped worrying and just used
one of the many text apps (I mostly use iA or Google Keep), I've been much
happier - I can focus on text, not on complex workflows.

~~~
glormph
Some years ago I read an article through HN by someone who did their
programming on an ipad through SSH (and bluetooth mac keyboard) and ditched
the laptop. Pictures of croissants in the sun outside in Munich. Got me very
inspired. But in the end I decided on a stationary box at work/home, and a MB
Air for when not at the desk (or on the sofa). Works great and doesn't weigh
much anyway. The main problem with the tablet was that were always things I
was missing that I hadn't thought about when moving to iPad. Maybe it'd be
better with another brand, but I'm not bothering now.

~~~
freehunter
I read that series of articles every now and again because it sells a
wonderful dream. The idea of being a highly mobile outdoorsman hacking code
across the city is appealing. I also love the single-minded workflow of iOS,
only one application is vying for your attention at a single moment. Anything
else just pops in to let you know and then pops out. And working on a remote
server is awesome, since the hardware doesn't matter anymore. I can bring
whatever terminal I need, so I'm not tethered to my desk anymore.

Unfortunately most of my programming is web apps, so while it works for his
C++ with long compile times, it doesn't work the same for me.

The one thing I did take from it long term is moving my dev server to the
cloud, AWS Cloud9 specifically. I often find myself working on two or three
website codebases plus two phone apps, and my personal laptop just doesn't
have the RAM or disk space to hold all of that. So I use Cloud9 for the web
apps and keep the phone apps on my local machine and it works out pretty well.

To be honest if Cloud9 worked on an iPad I'd probably leave my laptop closed
more often.

~~~
mtone
What are the benefits of this limited, paying cloud system over just RDP to
your workstation?

~~~
freehunter
As I mentioned in my original post:

>my personal laptop just doesn't have the RAM or disk space to hold all of
that

------
chj
TeX Writer developer here. Very flattered to be included in the author's
workflow. Sitting at the core of this process is WorkingCopy, which has the
most sensible integration with Files app that it simply keeps all files local.
After one or two emails with its developer, we managed to get the coordination
working rather quickly. The intersection of LaTeX & git & ipad users are very
small, but it is a joy to see that apps can work well together with just a
little bit of effort.

For iPad to function as a real computer, I think what we need most is a shared
file system that can be accessed by all apps alike, with some sort of access
control.

btw: Never expected that someone would dump the TeXLive tree into texmf-local.
Nevertheless, glad that it works.

~~~
hoschicz
Since iOS 13 ships with "full" Safari, how realistic is it to just use
Overleaf / ShareLaTeX for typesetting on the iPad?

~~~
chj
If you don't need offline solution, I think you can use them even without
iOS13.

~~~
erreJulian
I'm on a 9'7 right now and use Working Copy and Kodek to write and Overleaf to
"test" the LaTeX code and see if it will produce the .pdf I need. For full
time use it might be a bit harder, but it's not impossible.

------
wanderfowl
This is great to see, but also really frustrating. I see Apple pushing to make
iPadOS feel more 'real computer', but these sorts of basic Unixy workflows
still feel very hacky, particularly when it comes time to save things to the
'File system', as it were. I look forward to a day when I can someday actually
use things like XeLaTeX and Pandoc on an iPad to accomplish my actual work,
but for now, I'm finding myself editing Markdown and TeX now, and compiling
later. Not great, but good enough.

I've often wondered whether Apple could do well by doing something similar to
Crostini on ChromeOS, to allow these things to actually work as intended, but
without impacting security. But that also probably doesn't sell software as
effectively, as free software doesn't pay Apple's cut.

~~~
macintux
Apple doesn’t care about minuscule lost revenue because some people would want
to run containers of free software. Drop in the bucket.

~~~
jakobegger
If those users are so unimportant, why did Apple bother to introduce the
Hypervisor framework on macOS? If there's a big, important market for
virtualisation on macOS, surely it would be worthwhile to also address that
market on iPadOS? Especially since Apple is trying hard to convince all kinds
of professional users to adopt the iPad.

~~~
yoz-y
I think Apple has a different vision for needs of people who use Macs and
iPads for work.

For example the new Sidecar feature (use iPad as a screen) supports the pencil
but not touch. Apple believes that touch on macOS interface is not a good
experience. I suppose that they feel that text entry and chaining CLI tools on
iPad is not one either.

------
pvmcos
I love my iPad. Compared to windows at work it's way more reliable and
polished. I've been shifting over my computer interaction to the iPad with
good results and improvements in convenience, independence and efficiency.
Migrating rss, mail, web browsing and content consummation has been
successful. I too started using the calendar, to do list and notes app to
great effect.

Only programming I wasn't able to change yet. An attempt was made with a ssh
app, but it wasn't able to compete with a proper ide/text editor yet. For unix
as an ide fans it would be enough though. I want to learn that, but sadly I
still have to write native apps, though I'll change that when I have the
chance.

The best thing about iPadOS is control. It feels so relaxing not having to
worry about discord scanning all your processes and files just because you
want to chat with your friends. I hope they'll never go back to allowing
unsigned code.

~~~
n1000
> The best thing about iPadOS is control. It feels so relaxing not having to
> worry about discord scanning all your processes and files just because you
> want to chat with your friends. I hope they'll never go back to allowing
> unsigned code.

It felt like a loss of control when I learned recently that facebook uses a
loophole to exchange data with Whatsapp... [https://medium.com/@gzanon/no-end-
to-end-encryption-does-not...](https://medium.com/@gzanon/no-end-to-end-
encryption-does-not-prevent-facebook-from-accessing-whatsapp-
chats-d7c6508731b2)

~~~
sfotm
>It felt like a loss of control when I learned recently that facebook uses a
loophole to exchange data with Whatsapp... [https://medium.com/@gzanon/no-end-
to-end-encryption-does-not...](https://medium.com/@gzanon/no-end-to-end-
encryption-does-not..).

That's not what the article is saying - the linked article says that there may
be a way for Facebook to do this, but there is no proof that they are. That
still leaves room to say that maybe there should be user controls against
these app extensions, though.

------
AceJohnny2
I don't see TeXPad mentioned anywhere. An iOS LaTeX environment, featured here
a few years ago: [https://www.texpad.com/blog/latex-ported-to-
ipad](https://www.texpad.com/blog/latex-ported-to-ipad)

[https://www.texpad.com/ios](https://www.texpad.com/ios)

~~~
SuperTachyon
Actually Texpad is mentioned in the article briefly.

But, unlike its MacOS version, on iOS it’s not as very good. For example,
there is no multitasking support on iPad. The package managing relies on
installing pre-defined “bundles”, which don’t tell what packages are included.
On the Mac version of Texpad, we can choose between its own compiler or an
external one like tex live. But on iOS, the former seems to be the only
option.

~~~
AceJohnny2
Oh that's weird, I missed it when I searched for it.

Thanks for your feedback :)

------
mark_l_watson
Good write up, thanks.

I wrote three books using LaTex, but I now use markdown with leanpub,
otherwise I would immediately clone the author’s setup. I also find that an
iPad Pro is great for writing wherever I happen to be. I recently gave my
large iPad Pro to someone and bought the smaller one. My new iPad Pro is so
small it is always ready at hand.

~~~
mwcampbell
This is a tangent, but I just wanted to thank you for making that move away
from LaTeX. As I explained elsewhere [1], PDF (the primary output format of
LaTeX AFAIK) is not very accessible to blind people via screen readers. The
structured formats that can be easily produced with full fidelity from
Markdown (HTML, EPUB) are much better. I'm sure this isn't the reason why you
made the switch, but it's a nice side benefit.

[1]:
[https://lobste.rs/s/dhjp6r/what_are_you_doing_this_weekend#c...](https://lobste.rs/s/dhjp6r/what_are_you_doing_this_weekend#c_bdi7de)

------
m0zg
Or you can just get a ThinkPad X1 (a generation or two behind) for sub-$1k,
install Linux on it, and work in comfort with almost the same weight and
battery life. I'm really pleased with mine.

------
d3ron
Well, I just use Overleaf to do my LaTeX work on my iPad.

~~~
wanderfowl
Overleaf's fine, but lack of offline editing, and more crucially, trusting my
main working copy to live _only_ on somebody else's computer, is a bit of a
non-starter for me.

Plus, call me an idealist, but it feels like a huge step back when a device
requires a paid web service to do something that's completely free on a real
computer. I don't know that "pay somebody else" should be hailed as the
solution to "good software doesn't work on this device".

~~~
gdsimoes
You made a good point about offline editing but Overleaf's main reason for
existing is precisely TeX software not being so good.

~~~
pletnes
The collaboration and sync tools are very useful, including performant editing
by multiple authors at once.

------
goerz
I find Texpad to work great in principle, although I get frustrated by any
text editor that is not vim. If you have the ability to sideload (that is, you
have a developer account), there is a fork of iVim
([https://github.com/holzschu/iVim](https://github.com/holzschu/iVim)) that
supports running TeXLive locally on the iPad. I wrote up some notes on how to
make this work some time ago: [https://michaelgoerz.net/notes/editing-latex-
on-the-ipad-wit...](https://michaelgoerz.net/notes/editing-latex-on-the-ipad-
with-ivim.html)

When I don't need offline editing, another workflow I've used is to do the
editing on my linux server: edit via Blink/tmux/vim on the left, and see the
compilation result on the right via Screens/vncserver/evince (with auto-
reloading).

~~~
SuperTachyon
I actually came across your setup when figuring out mine. Thanks for sharing!

------
occamschainsaw
I have another (albeit more expensive) workflow. I use texpad[0] on my Mac and
iPad, with the files stored in Dropbox and iCloud. Works like a charm and
almost no overhead setting up.

[0] [https://www.texpad.com](https://www.texpad.com)

~~~
SuperTachyon
This actually used to be my setup too. But Texpad on iOS is not very good
(e.g. no multitasking support). Its Dropbox sync is not very reliable in my
experience.

Then I moved to TeX Writer and Dropbox, which worked better. Then I wanted
more (code completion, version control). So I ended up with the workflow
mentioned in the article.

------
paultopia
I just run myself a docker container with pandoc and a flask endpoint on
heroku.[1] Doesn't work offline, but with an iPad with cellular service I
basically am never offline, and I have a Siri shortcut set up to share
documents from any app, or markdown from clipboard, straight to the endpoint.
Full latex, markdown, conversion to word... and on free dyno time no less.

[1]
[https://github.com/paultopia/miniapi](https://github.com/paultopia/miniapi)

------
MichaelZuo
I just use Overleaf, way simpler. Needs a keyboard with the iPad though.
Almost a one button click setup.

------
ktaylor
I hate IOS. I don't understand why people try to turn a consumer device into a
serious developer workstation.

