The coffee served before the meeting comes from Italian food shop "
Martina", one of the few places in Uppsala where one can buy premium coffee at reasonable price. A cheaper, but still decent, espresso is sold under the ICA brand, and Willis carries Najjar, excellent for Turkish coffee (stove-cooked), but too thinly ground for espresso machines. Illy coffee is found in ICA, and it is very good, but far overpriced. Quality of coffee is less affected by the quality of beans (except that arabica is nicer than robusta) as by presence of defective beans and by speed with which it is roasted. Cheaper coffee means primitive sorting that leaves some rotten beans, and quick roasting (that increases volume per time unit and capital cost) which leads to loss of flavor.
We continued by discussing various aspects of math editing.
There are two ways to do TeX on portable devices, online (where you send your source for compilation on the server) and the good old local compiler.
The leading online TeX app for android is VerbTex, but almost everyone who has used it eventually gives up. TeXPortal (local compiler) seems to be the best solution so far.
TeXPortal is LaTeX for android devices. It comes with no TeX binaries at all, but installs them little by little based on what is needed for your source file. So, it may take an hour in the beginning looking at error messages - but it works at the end. TeXPortal uses TeTex, which is an older distribution superceded by TeXLive.
It also comes with no editor. Cyril suggested the
920 Text Editor. It is not classified as TeX (all apps that Cyril has seen under category Latex Editor are unusable, Emacs for Android is not as configurable, but vi affectionados can find something to their taste, like VIM Touch) , it is a programmer editor that hightlights syntax of a language, and you can choose TeX in the language option.
We also discussed
TeX Live.
According to
Wikipedia,
TeX Live is a free software distribution for the TeX
typesetting system that includes major TeX-related programs, macro
packages, and fonts. It is the replacement of its no-longer supported counterpart teTeX.
The good news is that, in addition to the above,
TeX Live is now available for android, although the android port is still in an experimental phase. One needs to download and install the
app, copy your TeXLive installation from Windows or Linux to the /sdcard/texlive/ path, unpack
tl4a-2013-06-18.tar.xz, and use its content to replace the Windows/Linux binaries.
GmailTeX: There is also a way to write TeX in gmail -
if you use Chrome as interface. Experiments by Cyril show that it does not work all the time, and when it does not, it shows the source TeX code instead. It can be installed via chrome://extensions and here is an example of what one can do
It works like this: once you press F8, Chrome translates TeX code into MathML. It is only the sender who needs to have Gmail TeX installed. The recipient can be anyone, but whether they see the formula or TeX code depends on the mail client.
Lyx: an open source document processor based on LaTeX.
LyX (styled as 
) is an open source document processor based on top of the LaTeX typesetting system. Unlike most word processors, which follow the WYSIWYG ("what you see is what you get") paradigm, LyX has aWYSIWYM ("what you see is what you mean") approach, where what shows up on the screen is only an approximation of what will show up on the page.
A quick start guide for LyX.
There are three shortcuts to remember.
- Control-M opens a math edit box where you write TeX. Some practice is required.
- Control-Shift-M does the same thing for display math.
- Control-R compiles and shows PDF.
A tip for people who do not like how the Math box behaves: write your TeX code as you want it, highlight it and press Control-M. This will show the graphics. You can always get it out of the Math box to edit.
The main non-common editing element of LyX is
environment. Every portion of text in LyX is marked up with some environment modifier. It can be Theorem, or Proof, or Standard for the bread text. It can also be Itemize, or Author, or Abstract, or Frame if you prepare a Beamer presentation. Only those environments show in the menu that are supported by the Latex packages that your file invokes. This is set automatically by the file template, or manually in the preamble setting in the document menu.
LyX export to HTML makes beautiful MathJax files.
When you start a new file for anything other than report, exam or grant proposal, better use a ready template or import your earlier TeX file. All your personal TeX macros will be adopted (and you can define more in the Document menu). Note that while export to TeX works flawlessly, import from TeX usually does not make a pretty LyX file.
LaTeX in blogs etc. Wordpress has a long standing reputation for formulas in the text. Google has been experimenting with LaTeX in the most ambitious ways, but some of its experiments that it showed off previously are not seen anymore. Cyril retracts its reference to Blogspot. Firstly it was a mistake, and TeX code was accepted by Google Docs. not by Blogspot, and secondly, it was taken away in later versions of Google Drive. Google's online compiler,
Latexlab , still exists, but is not recommended. For people who believe in virtues of online compilers,
Sharelatex (former Scribtex) remains a better choice.
Last but not least, I'd like to give a hint on how to use
sound on our ill-maintained computer system. We used to have sound but, according to the system administrators, there is no way to have it now. Why, I don't know. Other departments do have sound on their machines. However, here is a solution, not a perfect one, but a solution nevertheless:
- Press Control-F8
- Unselect "full screen"
- Minimize thinlink
- On the top left, click on Google Chrome
- There, you can have sound.
- For example, you can tune in to one of the best classical music radio stations in the world, Radio Swiss Classic. (Thanks to Salva Rodriguez-Lopez for this hint!)
