On 10/24/2010 12:31 PM, David Whetstone wrote:
Hi, I'm new here. I only recently joined this list. I've recently acquired an
iPad, and found myself wanting to be able to take notes with embedded equations
and such. AFAICT, no such app yet exists.
Then I thought about LyX. Even if one was not able to compile a latex document
on the ipad, LyX's editing features could still be very useful. So my question
is, how feasible is this?
I've spent the last couple of weeks on an exploratory mission - to see how hard
it would be to build LyX for the iPad. I've gotten as far as getting a clean
build. Completely non-functional, of course. Much in front-end and support is
just stubbed out. But it's a start.
I ask this question now because I've noticed recent comments to the effect of
removing the GUI agnosticism that exists in the LyX codebase. It's this
agnosticism that gave me the idea that it just might be possible.
I realize it will be a lot of work. But I think LyX for iPad could occupy a
useful niche in the iPad appverse. So tell me, am I wasting my time?
Well, as you presumably know, LyX depends pretty heavily upon Qt, both
in the frontend and in support. Since Qt does not run on the iPad, you'd
have to replace all of that. This is a massive undertaking. Some years
ago, there was an attempt to produce a Gtk frontend for LyX. This was at
a time when the core-gui stuff was much less entangled than it is now.
That project was never completed. It'd be hard enough to do if LyX
weren't a moving target.
I think maybe the way to go is to support the fledgling attempts to port
Qt to the iPad. See this thread:
http://lists.trolltech.com/pipermail/qt-interest/2010-April/021359.html
If that were done, then LyX would run no problem.
Richard
