Watch the release video for Texpad 1.6.3, a rewrite of Texpad’s interface with the following highlights:
- Enter text faster with Texpad’s unique onscreen keyboard, written from scratch with LaTeX in mind. In addition to the familiar iOS keyboard it gives you LaTeX specific keyboard modes containing Math symbols and common LaTeX shortcuts so you never need remember them again. We have also added natural gestures to select, move, indent and comment your text.
- Workspaces make it easier than ever to edit large multi-file documents. Texpad will organise your files, list them and display a unified outline of your entire project.
- Texpad’s upgraded autocomplete remembers commands, cite keys and label names for you, leaving you free to concentrate on writing
- All of these features are presented in a brand new interface that makes editing LaTeX on your iOS device as attractive as it is easy.
This rewrite started out as a project to refresh Texpad’s UI for iOS 7, but having started we took the opportunity to add a number of features we have been looking forward to including for some now. In addition to the user facing changes, we have put a lot of time into speeding up Texpad behind the scenes, so this update runs more snappily than ever before, even on my now ancient iPad 1.
A very noticeable change in Texpad 1.6.3 is the custom Keyboard. At heart Texpad is a writing app, and as the keyboard is at the centre of every user’s writing experience, we redesigned the onscreen keyboard with LaTeX in mind. The beauty of an onscreen keyboard is that you can put math symbols as keys just as you can regular characters. Not only that, but can even make keys out of LaTeX snippets. Look out for a future update in which we plan to make these snippets customisable just as they are on Texpad macOS, and even make them scriptable with Lua.
Work is already underway on Texpad 1.7, a major overhaul for Desktop Texpad’s interface and also the autocomplete system common to both applications. If you are interested in participating in the beta period let us know at support@vallettaventures.com.