[texshop] TeXshop and Apple M1/2 Chip
Bruno Voisin
bvoisin at icloud.com
Thu Oct 13 17:27:34 CEST 2022
> On 13 Oct 2022, at 16:49, Ulrich Groh via texshop <texshop at tug.org> wrote:
>
> If I understand it well, then TeXshop is also running on the new Apple chip set, at least at the laptop version. Does this mean, that in the near future we can expect TeXShop also on the iPad?
Not answering the TeXShop part (that one's for Dick), here are some side notes:
- Over a decade ago, at TUG 2010, there was a talk on the challenges of running TeX on the iPad
http://zeeba.tv/tex-and-the-ipad/
The outcome seems to have been an alternative .itex format for formatting and displaying TeX-prepared documents on the iPad
https://tug.org/TUGboat/tb32-2/tb101cheswick.pdf
But it probably didn't catch up, as the iTeX app mentioned there is no longer available on the App Store, and any mention of it has vanished from the author's web page as well
http://cheswick.com/ches/index.html
- The main problem with running TeX on the iPad is not chip-related (M1 vs Intel). TeX requires mostly a C compiler, and there have been versions for PowerPC and Intel 32 and 64 bits over the years.
As far as I remember, the main problem is license-related: the iPad implied (at least at the time, I never had nor used an iPad, so I cannot tell whether this has changed) getting apps from the App Store exclusively.
And the App Store was then deemed incompatible with the GNU license (at least its version 3, possibly others, I'm not a specialist).
This excluded many software from TeX Live, including kpathsea, the library used for searching and many other essential TeX Live operations. So gone was TeX Live on the iPad.
- There's another possibility though: KerTeX, a minimal TeX distribution
http://kertex.kergis.com/en/index.html
As far as I remember, this is what allowed the development of Texpad, now Texifier
https://www.texifier.com/
https://apps.apple.com/app/id550419159
a TeX app for macOS, iOS, iPadOS and soon Windows. Texpad is commercial software, not free.
Texifier now has its own TeX engine called TexpadTeX (ie an alternative to TeX, pdfTeX, XeTeX and LuaTeX). I don't know whether KerTeX is still used.
Bruno Voisin
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