After about two years of development, it’s time to present my upcoming app, Compositor.

The product page can be found here.

What is it?

Compositor is a WYSIWYG LaTeX for Mac. A word processing app that looks similar to Apple’s Pages app, but is powered by the LaTeX typesetting system.

If you have never heard of LaTeX before, here’s a brief introduction.

If you’ve been using LaTeX before, you probably love it for the beautiful output it creates, the system’s flexibility and the wide variety of extension packages available. But you may have also wished at some point to spend a little less time on compilation runs.

This is Compositor’s main selling point: it eliminates the compilation overhead almost entirely. Your changes are immediately reflected in the rendered output. You see the results as you type.

If you haven’t watched the teaser video already, I highly recommend doing so, to get an idea of what the app looks and feels like.

Who’s it for?

In the near term, Compositor targets an academic audience of people who have worked with LaTeX before, know what it is, and how it works. You will have to resort to LaTeX source editing in certain situations. For example, there’s no custom user interface to set up tables yet, you will have to set up the table structure in code for now.

In the medium term, I hope to make this great system more approachable to a broader audience.

When will it be available?

I’m aiming for October 2017 for the initial 1.0 release.

However, there’s a preview version available right now. Head over to the product page and download it now.

Try it out and let me know what you think. Feedback of any kind is highly appreciated. You can reach me by email (karl @ product domain) or Twitter.

What will it cost?

USD $20.

Students should be able to afford a license (e.g., for thesis work), and I think twenty bucks is reasonable.

Included in the purchase are all future updates, major ones included. Buy once, get all updates from that point on for free.

Please note that you can already purchase a license now and get 50% off the regular price. The license will be regular license, no strings attached. The idea is to generate some early revenue while rewarding early adopters with a nice discount in return. This early adopter discount will end when Compositor version 1.0 is released.

About me

I’m an indie Mac & iOS developer from Austria. I’ve been using LaTeX in university, and I always loved it for the beautiful output it creates. I think it’s high time to make this wonderful system more accessible and appealing.