TeX Live 2009 on iOS

Installing Tex Live 2009 on iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod)

This guide is based on the
original guide at http://gamma-level.com/iphoneos/ports/texlive#tex-live-for-iphone
A huge thanks for this goes out to Aaron!

 

Jailbreak required. This guide
assumes you have a jailbroken device. I have
successfully installed it on a 16GB iPad 2 3G running
iOS 4.3.3.

This procedure does involve a few
command line steps, but Aaron has generously provided an easy package on Cydia.

Step 1: Add the
gamma-level.com repository to Cydia: http://gammalevel.com/cydia/

Step 2: Install mobileterminal from Cydia

Step 3: Start up mobileterminal and type <login>, which will prompt
you for a username <root> and password <alpine>

Once there, run the following
commands:

iphone:~ root# wget http://coredev.nl/cydia/coredev.pub

iphone:~ root# apt-key add
coredev.pub

iphone:~ root# echo 'deb
http://coredev.nl/cydia iphone main' > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/coredev.nl.list

iphone:~ root# apt-get
update

Step 4: Go back to Cydia and find TeX Live, which
should appear now.

The iPad
as a Productivity Tool

Texastic is a great app for TeX editing on the itunes store.
You can write up the document in there, use iFile
(also on Cydia) to move the tex
file from Texastic to somewhere easier to find with
terminal such as the Media folder, for example. Then you would use a terminal
program (I used iSSH) to compile the tex file as a pdf
file.

 

Instructions for iSSH (you could also ignore this and compile tex in mobileterminal)

I used iSSH,
a program on the iTunes store to log into the iPad
(it is basically the same as mobileterminal, except
it has better functionality). In order to use it like mobileterminal,
I recommend the following settings:

Add Configuration

description: loginroot

host: 127.0.0.1 (localhost address)

Login: root

Password: alpine (you can change
this by typing <passwd> in the terminal)

Alternate Configuration

description: loginmobile

host: 127.0.0.1

Login: mobile

Password: alpine

 

When in terminal, browse to the
folder that has the .tex file (use command <ls> to view the current directory and ensure that the tex file you wish to compile is there).

run

<latex
-output-file=pdf nameoffile.tex>

This should
compile the document as a PDF, assuming you wrote your latex document properly.