[OS X TeX] TeXPad on iOS issues

[Warren Nagourney]

Hi,

I have been using TeXPad on an iPad Air 2 and am having some issues. I am not sure many people on the list have used TeXPad, but with the increasing power of iPad CPUs and the extreme portability of the iPad, I have wanted to move my desktop publishing to this platform (especially with iOS 11, which makes productivity in iOS much easier). So far, I am not very happy with the results.

First, TeXPad is very slow - about 10 times slower than a MacBook which benchmarks less than twice as fast as the iPad. Second, there are frequent hangs of up to 20 seconds when typesetting a modest size document (a 40 page chapter of my recent book).I have tried it with the network off (WIFI off) to remove slow network speeds as a possible cause.  Finally, the editor seems to have a fairly steep learning curve.

Has anyone had similar issues? Although iOS 11 is a big step up for iPad productivity, I am still not sure that it is a good platform for desktop publishing in math and science. I hope that this improves in the near future.

Thanks.

Warren Nagourney

ps. I appreciate that this is a Mac centric site, but when I asked a similar question a few years ago, the topic of iOS apps was considered acceptable.