Writing papers using LaTeX and iPad

I recently go inspired by a blog post by Mark O’Connor on http://yieldthought.com/. Mark took an iPad2 and Apple Wireless Keyboard bought and App that enables him to ssh (iSSH) into a Linux box and there he can do his daily programming work using vi and screen.

I started playing around with my own iPad and was wondering if I could use it to start writing my thesis. Good thing writing papers in LaTeX is like programming. The only thing that I needed to figure out was how to actually be able to be able to view the resulting pdf file. In the end nothing beats looking at your own paper. The marvel, and well the pdf must not have any orphans, got me to resubmit a couple of times.

There are basically two ways:

• Dropbox (referral link)
• public_html folder (if you don’t know what it is best use Dropbox (referral link))

I personally prefer the public_html folder option because I have an easier time sharing paper version with others as well as having a pdf available that I can link to from my SEGaL webpage.

Before I forget, iOS 5 is a must, nothing beats 4 finger swipes t quickly switch between apps, especially if you need to switch between editing and viewing. (for those iPad 1 users like me that are still on iOS 5.0 and want swipes and mirroring here is a hacked jailbreak (doesn’t jailbreak your iPad) that gives you those features).

Have fun writing papers using your iPad.