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Comment by huitzitziltzin | Hacker News Reader

Give me the _reverse_ of this (an actual chalkboard which will turn handwriting into Latex) and you can have all of my money.

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Are you willing to give your money to Microsoft? There's the Math input panel included with Windows, and Onenote has ink-to-math as an integrated feature. Of course to properly use either of them, you need a tablet computer with a digitizer pen.

Can you take that and convert it to LaTeX?

Yes.

I have not tried this. I have tried a similar product from Notability/MyScript Nebo and discovered that I have less-recognizable handwriting than average, I guess.

Notability (almost) does that, and manages to correctly understand very complicated expression with poor penmanship. It currently doesn't support exporting of actual Latex, just the rendered equation.

Damn, I got really excited and looked it up, only to find out it's iOS/Mac only.

I tried this when it was attached to Myscript Nebo a few years ago and found that it was middling w/ subscripts and superscripts. Maybe the product has improved in the meantime since it's been about three years since I tried to use it.

I’ve tried it on notability and for my use it’s really terrible. Sure it can understand complex expressions but 99% of the time it gets at least one thing wrong. Now that might normally be fine, except there’s no way to fix it because it just takes handwriting and gives you an image.

It’s possible notability actually uses the same API (although it doesn’t seem like it), but the mathpix api is great for this. It gives you back latex in whatever form you want. They have a desktop client but you can get more free requests direct with the API.

It lets me just snip any math and paste into my markdown editor (that renders latex) then I’ll often change one or two broken symbols and I’m off to the races.

100% my experience as well. I would love to have a quick way of having my handwritten equations rendered to latex (possibly with errors) and easily import into a markdown/latex document on my desktop.

What's your workflow to go from handwriting (on iPad?) to mathpix to desktop?

You should check out Mathpix Snip apps. The iPad app lets you write equations that will then show up in the desktop app where you can copy and paste the generated latex.

Disclaimer: I work for Mathpix

I use notability which syncs through iCloud and shows up on my Mac. Sometimes it takes a second to sync but I don’t constantly write in real time and convert to latex so it works.

Sometimes I also copy with notability and paste on my Mac through iCloud clipboard sharing but that feature seems to work about 25-50% of the time.

I use mathpix for textbooks, websites and handwritten math but if I know beforehand I’m going to need it in latex I generally find it easier just to type.

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