[OS X TeX] iOS apps

[Alain Schremmer]

On Sep 4, 2012, at 6:44 PM, Scot Mcphee wrote:

>> I have no idea where and what "Sync" is. I click in the pdf of the
>> whole book and here comes the tex of the included.
>
> Sync is on the context-menu.

Not in my TeXShop.

> Apart of command-clicking, I don't see this feature of TeXShop.

I should have said above that I command-click in the pdf of the whole  
book and here comes the tex of the included [chapter]

> It does however, do it more accurately, Texpad only jumps and  
> highlights the paragraph where as TeXShop will jump to selected  
> characters so its a bit more accurate.
>
> However the one thing that drives me crazy (sometimes) with TeXShop  
> is the plethora of multiple windows open at the same time. Texpad  
> has a very nice three-pane view. This is the thing with software;  
> we've all got our "one thing" that he hate or love about any bit of  
> software and for most of us, I think that one thing is core to our  
> liking it. I'm sure if TeXShop dropped the multi-document window  
> model then there'd be a whole bunch of people who'd get their  
> knickers in a twist about it - software users are like that!  
> (especially for some reason, some users of open source software).  
> But I digress.

I agree. I can see my not liking the three-pane view because of how  
many files I use at any given time. Even though I have two large  
screens, I usually have only the pdf of the references I need--say of  
other chapters, and I command-click to get the tex file only when I  
need to lift something from that chapter which is actually rather rare.

>>  There is of course another way to proceed: each included file has a
>> dedicated root file and so does the whole book. Then, when I click in
>> the whole book pdf, not only the included tex file comes up but so
>> does the corresponding pdf.
> Yes I can see that's very beneficial feature - that I will start to  
> use - but it doesn't solve the windowing model.

Somewhere, I have a more detailed description of the file structure. I  
can send it to you whenever you want.

>> You will have to forgive me: I know neither what MMD format is nor
>> Scrivener. But I will look them up out of sheer curiosity.
>>
> MMD is "multi markdown" it is a very simplistic markup that was  
> originally developed as "Markdown" by John Gruber of Daring Fireball  
> fame. This is just a way for non-techies to be able to write a  
> document with headers, and bold and italic and links, and then turn  
> it into HTML easily. You just do things like #heading# or *italics*  
> or **bold** or [link]. Wordpress has a plugin that takes Markdown as  
> one of its inputs for blog posts, for example. MultiMarkdown is an  
> extension with more features and the ability to transform itself  
> into several different output formats, LaTeX being one of them.
>
> Scrivener is a writing tool that allows you to write in small chunks  
> and easily rearrange them. It gives you the ability to break down  
> your long texts into a rearrangeable hierarchy and view it in  
> several ways, one of which is an index-card view that I find very  
> useful. It is a document drafting tool, not a document preparation  
> tool. Its actually used a lot by novelists and screenwriters  
> (screenwriting is very serious about having a completely rigid  
> format in Courier font, very weird). And also writers of academic  
> theses. A popular way to use it is to eschew its internal formatting  
> (which is by design pretty primitive anyway) and write in the MMD  
> format. Then it can run its built in MMD tooling to export the  
> results as LaTeX. Actually I wish it supported LaTeX properly, so I  
> could just write in LaTeX directly, but not (well, I think I could  
> force it to do it, but it would be clunky). I actually asked that  
> question in a forum once and people answered "Why would you want to  
> do that?", so I gave up asking about it there.

Well, I think that you have satisfied my curiosity.

> Also thinking and writing about this stuff is a great way to avoid  
> the actual *thesis* writing process. ;-)

Don't we all!

Regards
--schremmer