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Comment by aghilann | Hacker News Reader

If any of you know don't know what LaTeX is, it's a way to write documents, it's usually used to write Math and Science research paper's because the of the formatting and symbols LaTex allows for. It has a lot of flexibility, but everything in LaTex requires a lot more effort to type then in something like MS Word. I have to use it for a class I'm currently taking where you have to do super long proofs, I created a short 50 line script where I can enter a mathematical expression using plain text and shorthand's for special symbols and the function returns a string I can copy and paste into LaTex. Saved me and my groupmates multiple hours, I also posted on my class forum so I can save my classmates the pain as well.

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I recently came across a zine someone made called The Codex: Life with Linux. It's on Etsy for $6 [1], but their short chapter of LaTeX tips is fully shown in one of the screenshots [2]

[1] https://www.etsy.com/listing/1099735271/the-codex-a-zine-abo...

[2] https://i.etsystatic.com/9756188/r/il/09766b/3387078510/il_1...

Here is relatively recent collection of tools and tweaks to quickly create math in LaTeX, quick as in: live transcribing class notes. https://www.reddit.com/r/LaTeX/comments/ieonbz/using_latex_f...

> It has a lot of flexibility, but everything in LaTex requires a lot more effort to type then in something like MS Word.

It's not just super-flexible in the output but also in the input. It takes one short line in your preamble to define a new command or math operator, redefining long commands you use often - with parameters and/or optional parameters, if you like - to be whatever you want them to be. It sounds like you don't know that. Everything is redefinable, and it's easy enough to also make a short command name for a combination of symbols, or a new symbol, or anything you like. Commands can even draw pictures inline, e.g. with TikZ.

Might be worth looking into Lyx also. It's a sort of WYSIWYG for latex.

I have to disagree with you about LaTex being slower than word for equations. In fact, one of the big reasons I started using it was faster equation typing. And when word2003 was upgraded to 2007 or whatever came next, they actually changed the equation editor to allow latex style entry so you didnt have to click through the menus to get symbols.

What kind of shorthand do you use with your script? I honestly find latex's shorthand already short.

The course I'm currently taking makes me uses symbols like the biconditional, xor, and quantifiers. Each symbol requires an entire word to type out but I also frequency have to look at a reference sheet to find the command for each symbol. I just use short hands like "-" for not, "and" for $\land$, etc. I'm sure if I used LaTex more often, I would have most of the commands memorized but I use it infrequency so I almost never remember.

I'm pretty sure you can create macros in LaTeX, not sure If this would solve your problem.

Back in high school I used OneNote and had a pretty good MS equation editor setup. Most things can be done in a similar way to LaTeX, e.g. writing \theta for greek letters, writing a slash for fractions. With a few "replace with" "macros" I could write quite fast, probably faster than I can in LaTeX these days after about the same amount of practice, and almost never had to use the GUI.

These days my notes are all Markdown with inline LaTeX for math. I haven't yet found an editor that support "global" LaTeX macros/shorthand. Things like matrices can be bit of a pain, but then I haven't written any since linear algebra.

I wonder if you could make a few minor tweaks so it's a latex plugin and you can skip the copy and paste process.

If you put it on GitHub, or anyone linked me to a similar tool, I'd be interested. Thanks.

This is not exactly the same thing, as it just renders the output, but the following uses markdown and asciimath for quick math notetaking.

https://vedthiru.com/tools/notetaker

Disclaimer: I wrote it.

This is pretty cool, similar note taking service called Obsidian I use to take notes in Markdown

Here, have an upvote for sharing it with your classmates.

You might want to check out those blog posts: https://castel.dev

I don't think there are any engineers (people who have gone to engineering school) that haven't used LaTeX. [Editing based on replies]: Apparently I am wrong. Maybe it's just at the grad school level that one can expect to use LaTeX frequently; I made the assumption because I took a Master's.

You're very optimistic. I doubt anywhere near the majority of engineers have used LaTeX directly. I've seen a lot more (of all ages) who used Word for their technical writing. If they used LaTeX or TeX it was a one-off, not something they became skilled with.

Checking in as a BSEE: never used LaTeX.

It’s more common in CS than engineering in my experience, when CS is part of the math department.

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