News.

Long time since last post.
I this time I finally graduated and got accepted for a master in Nanoscience at the university of Copenhagen. I will move by the 2nd of august so there may be others delay in posting review and tips.

I also got a new iPad.

New reviews are coming:

a)mendeley for ipad
b)papers for ipad
c)latex typesetting on mobile

stay tuned

Excel to LaTex

I hate excel, but sometimes it is very very handy for small data manipulation, statistic and so on.
The biggest problem I always have is how to convert the tables to LaTex.
Yes obviously it is possible to do it manually but it is very time consuming.

But there are alternatives:

Excel / CSV to LaTeX Table Fragments Converter

link
You can copy and paste an excel, csv or whatever you want separated and it will add the  "&" to make the code inside tabular or table environment.
Very handy.

 Latable (windows only)

Get it here, by Alex A. Denisov. 

Latable interface

Latable is a windows utility that automagiccaly converts your excel tables into latex code, you can chose the ambient, borders whatever and you can copy then the corresponding LaTex code.

Each time you close it an error will pop-up, just click ok and relax !




Happy LaTexing to everyone

Texpad 1.3 Review

Texpad is my editor of choice for OSX.
Thus the review is somewhat biased, not because someone pays me, but because of how much I love this software.

I started using texpad back in version 1.2 and it was nice but not really worth every penny.
Then I had the chance to get in contact with the developers.
And here the magic happened. They are simply the best developer ever. They respond really fast, they do take care of your problems and so on. This is something every developer should do especially for paid software, yet rarely happens.
Texpad has recently hit version 1.3 brining new features and bug fixes thus making it worth every penny.
Now on the review.

1)Interface.
I like minimalism, it's no secret. Texpad UI is minimalist and thus I really love it. It's not as bare and ugly as the one of texshop, neither crowded and ugly  as the one of texwork or texmaker.
Also texpad as its own error console split in two part, the upper translates in human readable language the errors found and the lower part is the default log of the tex engine.

Lastly texpad has its own outline on the left , with beautiful monochrome icons for section, chapters and so on. It is beautiful and it doesn't distract from the writing.

Everything in the interface is really polished and consistent also I think that the single window interface is just right for writing with latex especially in a widescreen world.

2)features
Texpad has mostly all the basic features of a LaTex editor.
It also support pdf<->source sync by a click on the pdf to highlight the source and cmd+click on the source to go the relevant sentence in the pdf.
It has also a very useful auto-completion feature which comes in very handy because it can autofill the \ref{} and \cite{} commands.
As for typesetting it supports XeTex, LaTex, pdfLaTex and pLatex.
It has also syntax highlighting.


3)Integration
Texpad feels as native as ever on osx lion.
Not only the icon, and the interface are really native-feeling but also the fullscreen support and the life-saving autosave(apple calls it Version)feature of osx Lion.
It also support looking up word directly in the built in dictionary of osx both in the source view or in the pdf.


4)Future
at valletta ventures (their site ) no one ever sleeps.
Version 1.3.1 wil be out  with

• Supports the Biber engine as well as the Bibtex engine
• Many fixes to the makeindex typeset chain, including an option for typesetting with both makeindex and bibtex.
• Improved support for VoiceOver 

and later version 1.4  will support global search, also in included document in your main latex document file.

Available on the Mac App Store.  (paid app)