From CofC Math Department’s Stephane Lafortune:

Using keyboard with TeX Writer isn’t something new, but this one looks better than Apple’s!

An India App Store Review

I am a die-hard fan of LaTex and it was one of the things I missed on my iPad until I found this application on AppStore. I was extremely delighted to find this tool for iPad. I immediately bought it and started using it. Infact, my uncle who is a dentist and obsessed with Apple Inc. products finds this application very useful. Although, non-technical but he still bought this application and learned LaTex. He is using it for all his Patients prescriptions, bills, and receipts and even knows how to embed pictures in Tex documents.

Today, Duke Nukem 2 for iOS is available for download in iOS App Store. It’s powered by AEMULA, an 80486 PC Emulator for ARM, and developed by Interceptor Entertainment team, which I am proud to be part of.

I wrote a bit about its development here but first things first GO GET IT !

I’ve received a lot of feedbacks on package installation. People don’t like it at all. It’s too much work. On the other hand, I don’t like to bundle everything into the app and blow it into some hundreds-of-megabytes monster. Therefore in TeX Writer v1.5 we introduce an on-demand package downloader to make everyone happy. By default it’s off. You will need to go to settings and turn “Auto download” on. If this feature is proven to be stable, then we’ll try to turn it on by default in future.

Here is how it works: During compilation, if a package file is neither found in the bundled app folder nor in the texmf-local directory, TeX Writer will try to look it up in online repository (Internet connection is required). If a match is found, the package will be downloaded into texmf-local. And next time, it will just use the one in texmf-local without looking for online version any more. If you would like to redownload everything, just delete the texmf-local folder.

Another good news for CJK Chinese and Greek users: you don’t need to download the zip files and install them manually. All the files and fonts will be downloaded on demand. Just make sure you have a stable internet connection. Both of them are large packages.

This is a very special writing app that I created mostly for myself. I am not even sure if there is another person sharing the same needs as mine. It is designed for you to completely focus on writing. By separating writing from editing, it helps you focus more on getting your ideas out. Using it is like sitting in front of a typewriter and watching words flow out of your finger tips.

Everything you put down on the page is permanent. All the typing is saved as a PDF file, including the positions, the font size, and the colors that the texts come out with. No matter where and when you are going to view these pages, they will be kept exactly same as the time you typed them.

Fixed cursor sits right above the keyboard, therefore your eyes will be close both to the text you’re typing and the fingers, and that can help to reduce typing errors.

You can start typing on the page at any place by tapping on that location and use any margin you want by moving the page. It is very easy to type aligned texts.

An extension keybar includes frequently used keys like ‘ or ; that are difficult to access in iOS’ default keyboard.

Write Only is good for writing the first version of any work, especially diary or journal. When you come back to your writings years later, the shapes of the text and the errors you made will help you remember the moments of the writing.

App Store Link (Free)