No automatic syncing is easy to work around, but when you Upload This or Download Latest, you're firing blind — I propose a warning for when the file on-server has changed since download.

When I sort an external iCloud Drive folder by date, files sort correctly but folders don't appear to be ordered by modification date. They instead sort alphabetically, not even by created date. The Files app (and Textastic’s Add External Folder sheet) sorts the same folders as expected, with recently active folders at the top when sorted by date descending.

My projects live in iCloud Drive subfolders, so I'm most commonly navigating by "what did I touch most recently," and this makes that hard. Could folders be included in the date sort, ideally using the latest modification date of their contents, the way Files does?

Thanks, I’m otherwise really enjoying the trial!

V 10.9.8

Can't open anything from the app.

File Explorer- open with - Textastic works fine.

It would be nice to draw a line when the "form feed" control character is unique at the beginning of a line.

This makes it possible to separate various notes in a visible way.

Hi Alexander,

I would like to request an option to use the Tab key to cycle through code completion suggestions, especially when using Textastic with an external hardware keyboard on iPad.

I currently own an older iOS version of Textastic as well as the current macOS version, and I am considering purchasing the current iPad version as well. This particular feature would make the iPad version especially attractive to me as a serious LaTeX editing environment.

I use TeXShop extensively on macOS, and one of its features I find extremely efficient is its Tab-based command completion. I have also been experimenting with Textastic's custom CodeCompletion files on macOS, and Textastic already seems very close to being able to provide the same kind of workflow.

For example, suppose I define several completions related to a:

A
$a$
$A$

Ideally, I would like to be able to use the keyboard like this:

type: a

Tab    → first completion
Tab    → next completion
Tab    → next completion
Enter  → accept the currently selected completion

An alternative UI would also be perfectly fine:

a
Tab    → open the completion popup and select the first candidate
Tab    → select the next candidate
Tab    → select the next candidate
Enter  → accept

The important part for me is being able to cycle through the candidates by repeatedly pressing Tab, without having to move my hand to the Up/Down arrow keys.

For LaTeX and mathematical typing, this makes a surprisingly large difference. I use many short custom abbreviations, and keeping my hands in the normal typing position makes command completion much faster.

I understand that Textastic currently allows completion-list navigation using the arrow keys and Return. I would not want that behavior removed. Ideally, this could simply be an optional keyboard shortcut configuration.

For example, perhaps the existing completion navigation actions could be exposed under:

Settings → Keyboard Shortcuts

as commands such as:

Select Next Completion
Select Previous Completion
Accept Completion

Then a user could assign:

Tab        → Select Next Completion
Shift-Tab  → Select Previous Completion
Return     → Accept Completion

Ideally, Tab would have this special behavior only while the completion popup is active:

When no completion popup is active:
Tab → normal Tab / indentation / snippet behavior

When completion popup is active:
Tab → next completion
Shift-Tab → previous completion
Return → accept

That way, normal Textastic behavior would remain unchanged outside the completion list.

An even more TeXShop-like option would be to allow popup-free cycling, where each Tab immediately replaces the current text with the next completion:

a
Tab → A
Tab → $a$
Tab → $A$

with no popup required.

However, I think simply exposing “Select Next Completion” as a configurable keyboard command would already solve most of the problem and would be a very useful improvement.

I have already experimented quite a bit with Textastic's custom completion system, including CodeCompletion JSON files and snippets. The completion definitions themselves seem flexible enough; the missing piece is mainly the ability to control completion-list navigation from the Tab key.

Textastic already has many of the qualities I would want in an iPad LaTeX editor, and this would make the hardware-keyboard workflow much closer to what I currently enjoy in TeXShop on the Mac.

Thank you very much for considering it.

COBOL syntax support would be nice