[OS X TeX] Re: Change in App store policy opens possibility of LaTeX on the iPad?

[Nicola]

In article <0F6F04EE-51AA-4E77-8931-98B2E78A7281 at lse.ac.uk>,
 Jason Alexander <jalex at lse.ac.uk> wrote:

> Dear all,
> 
> Many of you will have seen the recent announcement on Apple's policy change 
> regarding interpreted code in iPhone and iPad applications:	
> 
> http://www.macrumors.com/2010/06/11/apple-eases-up-on-restrictions-on-interpre
> ted-code-in-iphone-developer-agreement/
> 
> This seems like it would open the door for the possibility of LaTeX on the 
> iPad. I realise that there are a number of other issues - I think the iPad 
> API doesn't allow fork(), for one, which I believe is used in the pdfTeX 
> engine - but at least the very idea is no longer a non-starter.

Maybe game developers have put enough pressure. In retrospect, the 
choice of Lua for LuaTeX seems strategically sound (who knows, Apple 
might even include a Lua interpreter in some future release of their iOS 
to support TeX... ops, game developers) :)

Unfortunately (so to speak), luatex and pdftex are released under the 
GPL. It has been reported recently on this list that the GPL license is 
incompatible with Apple's ToS. Do those changes also affect that issue? 
If not, xetex might be an alternative, as others have already pointed 
out.

Nicola