![]() LaTeX is an offshoot of a typesetting program called TeX, which was introduced by the computer scientist Donald E Knuth in 1978. However, the new apps still lack many of the packages and tools that users have come to expect from LaTeX, so although LaTeX has now joined the tablet revolution, it continues to lag behind. That began to change in September 2012, when two native LaTeX “apps” finally made it to the iPad – one of which, Texpad, was the result of a year-long development project for me and my business partner, Jawad Deo. Despite impassioned pleas from the academic world, the typesetting program used by tens of thousands of mathematicians, physicists and other scientists seemed to have been left out of this technological revolution. There was, however, one major exception: LaTeX. It took a little longer to adapt more serious desktop tools such as word processors and spreadsheets for use with a simplified touchscreen interface, but before long, almost all common desktop applications had tablet siblings. Apple’s device quickly gained competitors, as tablets’ portability and ease of use made them an instant favourite among people who use their computers mainly for e-mailing, browsing the web, watching films and playing games. With the arrival of the iPad tablet, technology finally caught up with science fiction – keyboards, mice, printers and disk drives had all been replaced with a simplified touchscreen interface and a wireless network connection. The tablet revolution began on 27 January 2010, when Apple’s then chief executive, Steve Jobs, stood in a packed lecture hall in San Francisco and unveiled “a third category of device”.
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