I've also read previous article about how the author manage to take lecture note using Vim+Latex (also posted on HN), and that's amazing how author managed to do that. But I'm thinking for people who does not know how to use Vim (arguingly high learning curve) and Latex to take note, what options do they have to take note quickly (with Math symbols/layouts)?
You can try out Mathcha[1] which is built to help people without knowing of Latex can easily write down Note (with rich Mathematics symbols/layouts) and it also provide basic Drawing and basic Function Plotting (The Drawing Part no way compare to Inkscape, but hey! you can type Math on Drawing on Mathcha) in single Editor.
Please note that I don't want to tout and advertise Mathcha here, the point is to provide another option for people to try out (I will not say it will provide faster or more powerful than Vim+Latex)
This might come off as pedantic, but LyX is explicitly designed to be What You See Is What You Mean (WYSIWYM) rather than What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG). It gives you the gist of how things will end up without attempting to actually represent the final LaTeX output while you edit. It's an incredible piece of software, and I strongly prefer it over raw LaTeX despite the fact that I learned LaTeX first.
I've just checked LyX, actually it's quite good and similar to Mathcha, but actually it serves different goals/features than Mathcha.
- LyX: full Latex compiled, and Mix between WYSIWYG and Latex Script. Mainly use to create Latex Document
- Mathcha: can export some parts to Latex (mostly Math mode) but does not guarantee to compile, a full WYSIWYG editor. The goal to just create Document without constraints to Latex format
I love Lyx but wish there were a less involved setup. Takes a very long time to install over LTE, and TeX distro feels 50/50 dice roll. If it’s slow on LTE in Silicon Valley, it’s slow in Africa. Hard to recommend.
> If it’s slow on LTE in Silicon Valley, it’s slow in Africa.
No, "Africa" is far too huge and varied to generalize about like that. Plenty of African countries have reasonable mobile infrastructure, and low enough costs.
$ apt install lyx
…
Need to get 216 MB of archives.
(This is coming from nothing, LaTeX isn't installed.) At 5Mb/s, that's about 6 minutes. That's not unreasonable for a one-off installation, especially in a country where these speeds are normal. (And 5Mb/s is slow: https://www.speedtest.net/global-index .)
The more likely hurdle is that it doesn't run on low-end smartphones (or maybe it does?) I know a Chinese university student who writes homework reports using Microsoft Word for Android because she can't afford another computer in addition to her phone. The situation in most African countries is probably not much better.
TeXmacs is an awesome graphical editor with full math support, that uses the TeX engine for rendering. It does not use TeX or LaTeX as its primary document structure though. It has many shortcuts for entering math that are really easy to learn and I have sucessfully used it to takes notes during lectures. I also use it as my primary work pad when thinking about complicated proofs.
Another option that I used to write my lecture notes in is DokuWiki. Simple syntax in general and you can embed LaTeX for formulas. I used a Lenovo x-series tablet, so I also had a stylus to quickly draw diagrams in Gimp, and the keyboard was nice too.
I'd use Emacs org-mode now unless the Wiki made was needed to work on with others.
Mathcha looks awesome! Thanks for creating it. What's on the roadmap? Are there other options to export besides latex and PDF? Hmmm, just noticed, there's no one-time payment license for the desktop version.
1. You can export diagram as Image (PNG), by selecting Diagram itself (not item in Diagram), and click "Save as Image" on toolbar (resolution will be doubled as normal). There is no Vector Format Export.
Have you considered open sourcing and selling commercial licenses for integration? I think this is a product that many corporations would love to integrate with. However, as an alone standing product I don't think it adds a lot of value. Something like the business model of draw.io
Very good point, did think about that, but until now still not very sure about business model. At the beginning, when we build it, we want to have a editor for people to easily type and share their Math (even without knowing LATEX). Will definitely consider/think about Integration, or somethings else ...
Hi, that's intentional, because we see that most of the time superscript input is only one character, you can press arrow left to go back and input more characters.
Maybe in future I should have a setting to turn off that feature/behavior.
OK I feel a bit silly because I didn't realize you could just press left and go back to editing it. It's not even unintuitive, this is exactly the behavior of e.g. grapher, which I use all the time, I really have no excuse.
With Inline Math (\inline-math), there are some symbols will be displayed smaller (by default) than Display Mode (math-container). This is because I implement it to be the same with LATEX style, maybe most of people dont want that behavior, so may possibly change in future.
If the link was the same, shouldn't you get a warning that this was already submitted? If I submit something that has already been submitted, HN automatically give a point to the previous submission.
Which is the way I expect it to work to avoid double submission and parallel discussions. The thing is: I have not quite understood why sometimes it works and others not.
Yes you can export to LATEX (Math Mode only), you even can import from Latex (still only for Math Mode). It support most of LATEX commands (not TEX and advanced commands like macro..)
We may support exporting to LATEX in Text Mode in future (if people really need that feature)
You can try out Mathcha[1] which is built to help people without knowing of Latex can easily write down Note (with rich Mathematics symbols/layouts) and it also provide basic Drawing and basic Function Plotting (The Drawing Part no way compare to Inkscape, but hey! you can type Math on Drawing on Mathcha) in single Editor.
Please note that I don't want to tout and advertise Mathcha here, the point is to provide another option for people to try out (I will not say it will provide faster or more powerful than Vim+Latex)
[1] Mathcha website: https://www.mathcha.io/
Disclaimer: I'm creator of Mathcha.