TeXPortal Free

THE TeX/LaTeX/ConTeXt compiler for Android

TeXPortal is a TeX/LaTeX compiler app, converting your tex document sources to PDF via the familiar TeX toolchains. It also fixes common TeX problems automatically, automatically installs missing packages just like MiKTeX on Windows platform. For more information, please visit http://lameandroidhero.bitbucket.org/

On Android 4.4 and 5.0, there might be permission problems when compiling files in external SD card.

This free version only provides the most commonly used TeX command, namely pdfLaTeX. Check out our full version for Xe(La)TeX, Lua(La)TeX, ConTeXt, DVIPS, BibTeX, PS2PDF, etc.

Notes: For your safety, TeXPortal Free exits itself whenever it is interrupted (i.e. put to the background) such as when the screen rotates, you press the "Recent apps" button, switch to another app, etc. Therefore, please keep your screen on, lock screen rotation, do not plug in keyboard, etc. when compiling documents.

This app might download additional packages from the web. To save your data plan as well as for the best experience, run the app when you have a stable WIFI connection.

DISCLAIMER: THIS SOFTWARE IS BY NO MEAN A REPLACEMENT FOR TEX DISTRIBUTION ON PC. WE DO NOT INTEND TO SUPPORT INTERNATIONALIZATION (NON-ENGLISH TYPESETTING), COMPLICATED FONTS HANDLING (NON-STANDARD FONTS SUCH AS ARIAL, ...) EVEN THOUGH POWER USERS CAN MAKE THEM WORK.

DUE TO SIGNIFICANT DEPENDENCY ON THE ANDROID OS, THIS SOFTWARE IS NOT GUARANTEED TO WORK IN NEWER ANDROID VERSION. WE RECOMMEND USERS TO STICK WITH ANDROID 4.1.

By using this app, you acknowledge that (i) this app is provided as is and there is no warranty of any form that it works now and in any future versions of Android; (ii) there will not be any support of any kind from us (the publisher).

TEN REASONS WE NO LONGER DEVELOP THIS APP

1. Google decided to force Android developers to use Android Studio, an extremely bloated IDE.

2. We can't trust Google as the platform maintainer: Every new version of Android introduces countless of breaking changes.

3. Continuing the previous point, the Android platform is losing its purpose of existence: Instead of being a free open-source platform, it is being more and more constraints by Google.

4. Android fragmentation is fairly bad at the moment: Each new version requires recompilation of the engine to work.

5. As a result of 1., we can no longer build the app: Even if we installed Android Studio, it just doesn't compile the app.

6. TeXPortal was built on doomed technology: It relies on the Android promise of allowing apps to "execute (remotely downloaded) Linux shell programs". Such feature should be completely disabled by Google by now for security reason as well as by Reason 1 and 2 above. [Think about free Android games that exploit such feature to mine cryptocurrency on your phones.]

7. Android users are very unforgiving: Once we mistakenly distribute the DVI-only engine in the free version TeX, several users gave us very uncivil feedbacks, calling the app useless etc. Another visible example is Samuel Braunstein's comment "Ruined Internal PDF viewer is awful and the developer turned off support for external viewers. Consequently, this app is all but unusable" which doesn't even apply to this app.

8. TeX-ing on a phone is really difficult and very unproductive.

9. We found new research purpose.

10. Last but not least, there is much better alternative: One can get cheap Windows 10 tablet to run LawTeX https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/p/lawtex/9nblggh16jqz which is the best LaTeX IDE in our opinion! It showed us how wrong it is to dismiss DVI-only TeX engines (c.f. the incidence in reason #7). And it provides the feature we could never think of (automatic recompilation, which is extremely useful when manipulating equations). Truly the best amongst all.