Open Beta of Texpad 1.8, macOS LaTeX editor with integrated realtime typesetting | Hacker News Reader

Open Beta of Texpad 1.8, macOS LaTeX editor with integrated realtime typesetting

texpad.com

120 pointssteeleduncan44 comments

This is tangential to the topic, but of you use TeX or any related system (latex, texinfo, cweb, metapost, etc.), please consider becoming a TUG (TeX User Group) member. They rely on membership and donations to keep going (and there are some tangible benefits to being a member, too).

(Disclosure: a friend who is active there told me they are not doing so well.)

https://tug.org/join.html

I've downloaded the beta and played for 5 minutes. First remarks and thoughts:

- When the realtime typesetting works it is impressive. For example, changing the coordinates in a tikz picture results in almost immediate change of the PDF. And command / environment auto-completion is very smooth, very well done.

- However, the typesetter can get stuck and this happened for me in the first try. I am aware it is only the first public beta so I guess things will improve.

- Please, oh please, can any specialized TeX editor reproduce the following feature I have setup in Emacs? In the editor (not live preview) display standard mathematical symbols as symbols and not as commands. For example, make \alpha appear as α or \int appear as ∫. This is so nice that I hesitate moving to other tex editors because I know I will miss it.

Thanks, I'm glad it is working out for you.

Regarding the bug: Is there any chance you could email us at support at vallettaventures dot com? that way we can get back to you when there is a fix. Also, we may need a spindump to find out where it is locked up, so we can send instructions on how to create that if you have a moment.

We've had a request or two for this in the past. I've added your vote, the plan during the 1.8 series is to do a series of small updates, and this would be nice.

Which extension do you use in Emacs to get the symbols?

I am not aware of an extension doing this. I wrote some elisp for doing this a few years back.

Can you share your latex setup?

cdlatex-mode has that feature IIRC. Probably auctex does too.

Its something related to prettify and auctex; unfortunately im on mobile atm.

Personally, I'd be really against that feature, because I think Unicode symbols as math juxtaposed with monospace can look awful. If they do implement it, please keep a toggle to turn it off.

The emacs package I'm thinking of actually renders the snippets and replaces them with png images inline.

That's preview-latex which is included with the AUCTeX package in emacs

Yes, this sort of feature would always be gated by a preference option. Some will like it, some won't.

Right now in Texpad if you place the cursor in a command for a math symbol for a few seconds, a popover will show that symbol.

I'm sure real-time rendering will be useful in a variety of use cases. However, one of the main reasons I use LaTeX (when I did) was because it allowed me to separate creation of the content from worrying about the format. This meant I could switch between author and designer without my (feeble) focus being distracted by an image jumping around or an equation overflowing. Indeed I actually found 'compiling' a LaTeX document quite exciting as I anticipated how it might look.

I can see this being useful in the final phases of a paper, when I’m killing orphans (words and sentences), overflows, and underclass, via slight sentance rewriting. Right now it’s modify, build, examine, modify, ...

Of course that I can do this at all is due to tex’s layout algorithms that try for good fits but not too hard (a good choice IMHO).

Finally ! Waited for sooooooooooo long.

Just as I start my PhD too, nice.

Good luck!

Thanks!

I'll second the other child comment and wish you good luck.

I'll also tell you to check out overleaf--it does most of this in a browser, so you have the collaborative aspect if you need it.

I've always used sharelatex, but recently overleaf and sharelatex merged. Nevertheless, have a look at sharelatex too - I prefer their UI.

Thanks for the wishes !

I’m surprised that more editors don’t have a built in TeX distro. I really don’t want to install 500mb to 1gb worth of software and fonts for something that I’ll use probably once every 3 months.

I think you explained it in your statement. Why bloat an editor for a niche or occasional use?

Online TeX systems like Overleaf solve the problem.

So excited for this, really excited to dig in and start kicking the tires. One question, since it looks like steeleduncan is answering questions in here: How does the realtime typesetting deal with large documents? I can't tell if it can keep up because it's only re-calculating a segment of the total document, but I've been working with LaTeX mostly for book-length documents; my chronic annoyance is the minute-plus compile times unless I break it up and only compile a chapter or two at a time. A realtime option would be a huge benefit for the final typesetting runs where I'm trying to fix image placement and orphans and whatnot, but I don't know if that's asking too much of the engine.

When you move to a new part of the document you will see "Caching" briefly whilst Texpad prepares itself, then as you say, it will be incremental typesets from then on.

What you are suggesting should work well, if you have troubles with that in the beta please get in touch with us at support at vallettaventures dot com with the document and we'll take a look.

Really cool project. I have some comments tho.

I don't quite understand what Connect is. Is it a cloud IDE or is it an add-on to sync your projects across existing clients on Mac or iOS. I think this wording confused me the most on the OSX client: "$9.99 + 6 month subscription* of Texpad Connect". I'd package it as: if you buy OSX client, you get 50% off from Connect for the next 6 months. Or even better, just give 3 month Connect for free with each license.

Also, I don't understand why you'd have to buy Mac and iOS licenses separately. Wouldn't it be nicer to use a single license across all of your devices?

Yes, we are reworking the website for 1.8's release, that is going to be altered. You are correct, it is a discount when bought together.

Connect is for realtime collaboration. You and your collaborators can use Connect from within Texpad so that you have a single document between you.

There is no facility in the iOS App Store for us to sell codes, or for us to find out who has purchased via the iOS App Store, therefore it is an entirely separate product to that which is sold via our website.

I just purchased 1.7 today, this is an unexpected bonus. :)

What's the point with deliberately voting down my statement? I was just rejoicing. I was already happy with 1.7 and 1.8 is even better. How on earth does demand retribution??

First, just ignore downvotes, as trying to find rhyme or reason is the road to insanity. You’ve got enough points to cease giving a shit. And on mobile, mistakes still happen ‘cuz those buttons are still pretty damned small.

But if I had to guess, “doesn’t contribute to the conversation in a meaningful way”. Not that I agree, so have an upvote.

Thanks for your reply too. Yesterday I had a bizarre run-in with another person I inadvertently offended (apparently), so I’ve become hypersensitive to the prospect of being rude and/or upsetting people.

It's not retribution. IMHO, it's a response to posting something that does not advance the conversation. Nobody gains any knowledge about the product or the market niche by knowing that you're rejoicing. While this might not seem welcoming to your comment, the policy keeps HN on track as a forum of high-quality conversations. Given your good karma numbers and your comment history, you've contributed many of helpful comments and insights in the past. Thanks!

That’s a very clear, concise, and now that I think of it, condivisibile explanation. You’re right about staying on topic. Thanks for the levelheaded response, I really appreciate it.

This looks interesting, but I don't think I can commit to mac-only software for this personally. I stumbled on TeXstudio [0] about a year ago, it has been very nice, though I still have a ways to go as I had not used any TeX before... It's GPLv2, cross-platform Linux, MacOS and Windows.

[0] https://www.texstudio.org/

I’m on mobile at the moment, so please bear with me. There are several features that AuCTeX + evince gives me that I have not seen together in many other solutions:

* ability to invert pdf colors for night time * synctex support * ability to also easily switch to other pdfs that I’m referencing

How does this work with packages like TiKZ or TiKZ-CD? Right now I’m perfectly happy with auctex and aquamacs, but if this did real-time tikz rendering then I would be sold.

By the way, if you're using tikz-cd, you should check out http://tikzcd.yichuanshen.de. It's not really complete enough for a final version, but I appreciate being able to put a quick backbone down and then edit later.

The PGF system required by Tikz/Tikz-cd/Beamer/Pgfplots and a number of other packages is fully supported. You can edit your figures in realtime.

See also Compositor, which is also in development and available as a preview.

http://compositorapp.com

Thanks it's incredibly impressive.

EDIT: I bought his previous app for iPad. It was equally as impressive but very quickly discontinued....

Unfortunately, it crashes instantly upon trying to open any of my documents.

Looking forward to the stable build. I'm a big fan of the editor.

Is there any chance you could email us at support at vallettaventures dot com? Potentially there is something specific about your document triggering the crash. If you could paste the crash report into the email that would be really helpful.

I wish I had a need for this right now. I used 1.7 to write my thesis and loved it.

This would be launches as I've graduated. Congrats guys!

Hope I find a use for it soon!

Whatever happened to ITeX? (rings bell)

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