A good template for note taking

Question

One of the problems that I have read that people say about LaTeX is it isn't very good for quick note taking.

Has anyone used LaTeX for quick note taking? If so what template have you used? And how have you setup your system so it is relatively easy to make quick notes?

EDIT In response to some of the comments, I am currently using vim as my editor. Which I am very proficient in using.

Answer 1

I find note taking in Pandoc's version of Markdown to be a very efficient way of taking notes in any text editor. This provides an efficient way to mix simple outlining using numbering or bullet points, alongside the math capabilities of LaTeX.

Using this approach you can get readble plain text notes that can be readily converted to LaTeX for PDF output, HTML, or any of the other formats that Pandoc supports.

Here's a short example:

1. Level one heading
    - a bullet point
    * also a bullet point
    + yet a third way of writing a bullet point
    - pick your poison!

#. With numbered lists Pandoc will figure out the correct numbering for you
    - Isn't that cool?

#. You can mix math inline $x^2 + y^2 = z^2$ or in display mode:
    $$
    \frac{a}{b} = \frac{c}{d} + \frac{e}{f}
    $$

#.  You can mix styles
    a) sublist with alphabetical
    b) nice, eh?

Answer 2

I take notes with latex using the outlines package. It lets you write an outline/list without typing all the environments. For ex:

\secc[tested]{The title of Outline}{
    \1 This is the first level of a list.
        \2 This is the second level
           \3 You can go up to four levels
                \4 You can dynamically change the symbols that start the list
}

I have many of these in my notes. Not one big outline.

I find it highly productive and easy to use while taking notes.

http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/outlines

I also recommend setting up a bunch of macros or shortcuts for your commonly used things. It helps speed everything up.

Answer 3

I use LaTeX for note taking in an indirect way:

I use emacs org mode for note taking. It has a very rich and configurable LaTeX export. So I am able to keep my notes in org mode and export them from time to time or I can export and finalize it in LaTeX, e. g. for writing a paper. But org mode is so powerful that people used it to write papers without postprocessing of the LaTeX code. You can even include code and evaluate it on the fly, with the result being automatically included into your document, you have built in table and basic spreadsheet support ... You can intermix org code and LaTeX code if you need something special. But the org syntax is much more suitable for fast note taking, more like a wiki syntax. Org has facilities for automatic handling of todo notes and can be used as a calendar replacement as well. Parts of the document can be hidden by just pressing tab, what helps a lot to get some overview. There is also a vim clone of org mode.

Answer 4

I'm a bit old school and prefer taking live notes with a pencil and note pad. If it's important, go back and turn these into a more readable document.

As professor, I find it HIGHLY distracting when students are pecking away at their laptops instead of actively participating in lecture...which is hard to do when part of your attention is devoted to formatting Latex equations. Moreover, for anything that involves a plot or a graphic...learn to sketch it in your notebook. You'll be amazed at how much better you will comprehend the material.

That stated, for my RESEARCH (in condensed matter physics), I keep a series of Latex and Mathematica notebooks organized by topic, date, and student involved on the project. The Emacs ORG mode looks interesting, I'll have to check it out.

I have been doing things this way for almost 25 yrs and I require my PhD students to do the same. I have common group DropBox & each of my PhD students has a folder within the Group folder. Also, each final paper has a separate directory with either all input files or original version of the computer programs that were used for that paper.

Answer 5

I use AUCTeX mode in emacs to take real-time notes in my calculus 1 class.

Useful features include preview-latex mode, where I hit C-c C-p C-p to toggle rendering $\dfrac{\pi}{2}$ sections as inline images.

TeX-electric-macro makes life much easier because I can type \ and get intellisense style completion for LaTeX commands.

Standard emacs functionality like abbrev-mode lets me autocomplete chunks I've already typed.

Predictive mode is handy, but I haven't used it much yet.

Once I find a way to quickly enter graphs, I will need only a few improvements to make LaTeX note taking faster than paper-based input.