One of the things I miss in iOS, and I doubt Apple will ever implement, is support for third-party external keyboard layouts. Now, I write with my own layout on the Mac, that is a “modernized” Italian typewriter layout. Apple used to use this layout up until 2000, and then switched to the IBM PC layout - a non-ISO standardized layout, that is the American one with some accented characters sticked wherever they could fit. A pain to use for writing.
I use my own layout both on a blank keyboard and on IBM PC-type keyboards with no troubles - I’m a touch-typist since my early youth. I also simulated this layout on the iPad by using TextExpander touch. Obviously, I would be more than happy if I could use a real keyboard layout, instead of using a series of macros (that are working fine, but I suspect they are somewhat slowing down the processor).
Good piece today in PC World, by a tech writer who has switched to iPad 2 from a laptop for mobile computing. He says that the iPad + 3g + Zagg Folio keyboard is perfect for travelers, mainly because it has Internet access and the battery will last an entire day.
He uses the apps to write, do simple art work, and maintain a schedule. The iPad 2 also has VGA out, for making presentations via a screen projector. Almost has me convinced to scrap plans for buying a MacBook Air. Especially if we get Scrivener for iPad!
I’ve been using the iPad for seven months now, with an external keyboard, and I agree with the PC tech writer. The iPad can replace (and perhaps will) a laptop depending on two factors: what the user needs to do, and the apps that do it. As a writing tool, the iPad is an excellent choice, even if there’s no Scrivener yet. If Cervantes could write Don Quixote by hand, and many top writers felt in heaven when typewriting machines appeared, what’s the iPad compared?
With iScrivener, it would be the ultimate mobile tool for writing… Perhaps not editing, but writing, the old craft of make words appear on the white page.
I did a seminar at the university, last week, with 2Screens and a projector. It worked great, apart for the fact that the app could not show a full vertical page of a book in the slide navigator. Maybe GoodReader would have been more appropriate - I don’t know. But the experience, with this small, nearly invisible* device, was a positive one.
Paolo
The professor, however, who is anti-Apple, described my iPad as a device that is intended at the same time to show content, and to show itself. He is never wrong, so he should be right.
The problem may have been with the projector, rather than the iPad or its app. You have to “mirror displays,” which is easier on a laptop than a tablet. But if you could see a full vertical page on the iPad, it should have been the same on the projector.
I have found that PDF Browser plug-in will not properly display on a projector, because the software requires Quartz and the projector can’t handle that. I have shown GoodReader files from an iPad and had no problems.
Saints preserve us, Signor Paolo.
Has this thread been placed below decks, amongst Scriv’s intelligentsia, in order that it may be revealed to an unsuspecting and vulnerable world, that there is more than one Vic-k!?
Storm clouds forming on the horizon, Signor P.
Fluff
I discussed this with the developer, and it seems it is a current limitation of the app. He is working on it. It is not a matter of mirroring, since the beauty of 2Screens is that you can see something on your iPad (the list of pages/slides) and project something different (the page, slide or whiteboard). The problem appears in the local preview, but not in the projected image.
