I don't know, maybe the author is trying to do something with the iPad which is simply not supposed to do. The iPad is beautiful, pleasant to use etc. but writing a book on the iPad is maybe not the things one does.
I use my tablet to write — quite a lot — way slower than on my regular keyboard, but with time to think. Everything is in text files, synced to my desktop where the typesetting is really performed.
Writing publications or books is a long process where basically the final rendering is taken care at the end because the quality of the wording is more important.
So, just a text editor with hard work on the words, sentences, ideas are where 99% of the time is spent.
Maybe the author can provide an extremely pleasant way to write on the iPad and on the Mac with syncing of the work to have the feeling that the work is never lost, that one can always update a bit of the manuscript and just run "make" on the Mac some times to times. Everything in a smooth workflow.
What if you just wanted to implement a TeX based ebook reader? I think the fact that you can't think of a use-case doesn't negate the problems he's facing.
I understand that tablets are a wonderfully portable device but you can't expect to get 100% desktop functionality. Sometimes you have to find the limit of your software/hardware.
I don't own an iPad, but is there git or the like? If so syncing and keeping track of changes would be simple.
> Sometimes you have to find the limit of your software/hardware.
The point is that there does seem to be a software limit, but there shouldn't need to be a particular limit there. There's certainly not a hardware limit, since an iPad can run circles around almost all of the computers of the era when LaTeX was written. Unless you believe that the TeX system represents an almost magical, once-in-a-lifetime, impossible to replicate achievement in software engineering, there's shouldn't be a software limit either, but the code base is so complicated that there does seem to be one.
From what I can tell, the software limit is that everybody has a different set of custom macros and styles that they use, and that distributing extra code is a violation of Apple policy, one that can't be fixed unless you get rid of not only the reality of LaTeX but the idea of LaTeX as a macro system.
"""I don't know, maybe the author is trying to do something with the iPad which is simply not supposed to do. The iPad is beautiful, pleasant to use etc. but writing a book on the iPad is maybe not the things one does. I use my tablet to write — quite a lot — way slower than on my regular keyboard, but with time to think."""
You can pair the iPad with a bluetooth keyboard and write away at full speed.
And with something like LaTeX you won't even have formatting to slow you down.
I use my tablet to write — quite a lot — way slower than on my regular keyboard, but with time to think. Everything is in text files, synced to my desktop where the typesetting is really performed.
Writing publications or books is a long process where basically the final rendering is taken care at the end because the quality of the wording is more important.
So, just a text editor with hard work on the words, sentences, ideas are where 99% of the time is spent.
Maybe the author can provide an extremely pleasant way to write on the iPad and on the Mac with syncing of the work to have the feeling that the work is never lost, that one can always update a bit of the manuscript and just run "make" on the Mac some times to times. Everything in a smooth workflow.