[OS X TeX] Anybody tried TeX Touch?

[Thomas Rike]

Hi Tim,

I was too confused by the FTP on the Go Pro solution Ramon M. Figueroa-Centeno set up for us back in May. I have been using LogMeIn Remote desktop, but it is too much trouble to do anything beyond a simple edit and compile. Then getting it back to the iPad is also a hassle. So I decided to put down my $9.99 when I heard about this app today and I have been pleasantly surprised. I can open files edit them, recompile, and view the pdf on the iPad via the Dropbox almost seamlessly. No, I don't have color coding and I didn't try to edit my book, but for composing a couple pages of LaTeX when I am away from my computer it works very well. I won't have to carry my laptop with me as often now and I have become a real convert to point and touch with a keyboard on the screen versus trackpad and keyboard input to a separate screen. 

Two errors that I made should be noted: 

When I first opened TeXTouch.app I wasn't sure what encoding to choose and just picked unicode (all my files loaded with Chinese characters). After much gnashing of teeth, I went back to settings and found UTF8 which solved that problem. 

If you want to compile from the iPad the (beta) solution that is offered is TeXTime.app that needs to know the path to the TeXTouch folder in your Dropbox and the path to pdflatex. The suggested path /usr/texbin/pdflatex gives an error since the pdflatex file is just a pointer and not the executable file. Just navigate to that pointer and choose the path and it will pick up
 
/usr/local/texlive/2009/bin/universal-darwin-64/pdflatex

Then everything works as advertised. I hope lots of iPad owners pick up the app, so that the developer will be encouraged to continue on with his planned agenda. 

Take care, Tom Rike


On Jul 12, 2010, at 11:57 AM, Tim Lahey wrote:

> Looking around the app store I noticed that there is an iPad
> app called TeX Touch that looks interesting. On the plus side,
> it says it has Dropbox integration, but on the down side it doesn't
> have syntax colouring (yet).
> 
> Has anybody tried it? If so, what are your thoughts? I didn't
> see any reviews and I'm hesitant to spend $10 sight unseen.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Tim Lahey
> 
> ---
> Tim Lahey
> PhD Candidate, Systems Design Engineering
> University of Waterloo
> http://www.linkedin.com/in/timlahey
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