General ⇒ LaTeX on Android

[vonkrolok]

With the advent of tablet PCs (meaning the iPad alternatives), working on the go was made much easier. I was wondering if there was in store some project to port LaTeX on Android, either in the form of a complete package (say MikTeX for Android) or in the form of a WYSIWYG editor like LyX.
Android has some form of editor with remote compilation (VerbTeX), but I was more interested in a proper, on-board, compiler in order to select the packages I want to have and to use instead of relying on those available online (or brought there by me: VerbTeX allows up to 4 packages on a free profile, none of which is available with the compiler they use).

Thanks in advance to whoever answers and more so to whoever wants to accept the challenge

[Frits]

When searching a bit on the web, all I found was VerbTeX. So as it seems, no such thing is available (yet).
Have you tried one of the many online TeX editors, by accessing them via the browser on your tablet?

[vonkrolok]

Yes I did, but the packages are very limited, it's not like using a full MikTeX installation. VerbTeX compiler allows one to upload on the website a max of 4 packages, more if you pay, but LaTeX itself is a free software... why should I pay for a compiler? So I'm back at square one... luckily I don't own a tablet yet, purchase is conditional to usage and if I cannot find anything to use latex I'll stick to my laptop

[rgksugan]

Hi,

I have created an Android app to edit tex files in android devices. It allows you to send the files to your remote machine through ssh and convert it into pdf.

The link to the app is

https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... ex4android

The app is free and the source will be released in open source in few months. Please use the app and let me know if you need any changes to it.

Thanks
Sugan

[anhoavu]

I got my Nexus 7 a few week ago. I was disappointed that there is no (local) TeX on Android and VerbTeX is an ugly choice. So I chose to create one for myself. The Android-friendly binaries were compiled using Google NDK (with some limitation such as no xdvi as it requires X Windows system which is not available on Android; no xetex). You can check them out at

https://github.com/anhoavu/TeXAndroid/tree/master/build

With a rooted phone or tablet, simply install a terminal emulator such as https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... ndroidterm and 'push' the extracted build to an executable location of Android such as /system or /data (need root permission here). 'chmod' the binaries, deploy the TeXMF tree, do mktexlsr, ... and enjoy TeX just like on Linux. (I will write a detail manual for this in a few week time.)

I am in the progress of creating an app that makes use of those underlying binaries without having to root the device. It also offer a convenient way to install the additional packages. The project is at

https://github.com/anhoavu/TeXPortal

Drop me an email (obtainable from github) if you want a preview of the app (or you can compile them yourself by downloading the project source code)

[micelle]

Like the author of TeXPortal, I wanted to compile LaTeX documents on my tablet. I had a working port of Timothy Murphy's javaTeX and Tim Hoffman's jDvi before I gave up...

I realised I'm almost never without an internet connection, so I built a web service instead (http://micelle.org.uk). This meant I could concentrate on the things I needed: synchronising source files between my phone and tablet (via Google Drive) and printing (via Google Cloud Print). And you're welcome to use it too.

Edit: Out of interest, does anyone here think there's a market for an Android e-book reader app that understands LaTeX? Only I have an android TeX compiler and DVI viewer going spare.