Best way to write digital notes

Dont use microsoft word

ummm… why not?

Price

100/year for 5 users, 70/year for 1 user or 150 for one user (lifetime)

To slow

if you think about it…

Compatibility

old documents look terible, importing stuff from the internet looks awful aswell.

It’s full of endless menus

unnesesarily comlex, good god I just need to take quick notes!

Good luck taking math notes with it.

you have to click a bunch of times to even insert a greek letter or symbol.

Bad Formating system

formating always changes for whatever reson. I should’t have to worry about it when i need quick notes!

Its not profesional

Maybe back in 2006 you could impress you teacher with the look of your report but nowadays the magic is gone.

it can even be realy ugly and obnoxious.

Pictures and images never work, ever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMiRWeaUXog&ab_channel=PissedOFFRanting

Its just to complex.

so much that quality sufers from it.

well, maybe you can try something else more modern like pages, right?

Or any other hipster programs that nobady uses.

if you use an app that nobody uses you will suffer from more compatibility problems

Word, Pages and drive. HMMM…

What do they have in common?

They all folow the same philosophy

“What you see is what you get”

That’s why formating sucks on all of them:

if you write a paragraph it adds writen content, but if you add images, graphs and maths it adds graphic content on the asumtion that they are the same.

when desgin and content are treated equaly, one change afects the other.

What you see is what you get.

when taking notes you cant aford to wrestle with your computer.

Its your tool, its suposed to help you!

ok ok, here is my trick

Markdown documents, Latex and Pandoc.

so I’d set myself up with these programs.

And they are all 100% free and custumizable.

(not sponsored just a big fan)

With markdown you can:

focus on writing on any device, phone/computer/tablet because it requires minimum imput from you.

Quick and easy

For example:

On word to make a title you need to write the title, then get your hands off your keyboard, grab the mouse, drag the mouse to your soon to be title, hold click to select the words, right click, click on styles, then click on title, and then and only then you can write the actual document.

I know you can do it a tini bit difrent but you get the idea: lots of steps, lots of clicks and they all draw atention to themselfs instead of alowing oyu to focus on the notes.

On markdonw you type hashtag then your title and you are done.

it allows you to focus on whats important.

Its so simple!

so much that im going to teach you in 1 slide all the basics, here we go!

type # before your titles, you can write ## for subtitles, and ### for sub-subtitles and so on…

Type 2 * without spaces around your text to make it italics *one of each side* , or 2 on each side to make it bold *like this*

to make numbered list type any number folowed by a point and a space like this: “1.” do one of these for each item on the list, or type * then space to make a bulletpoint list.

tree minuss signs then enter make a line on your document that goes across the page

To recap:

• Titles and subtitles with #
• italics and bold with 1 or 2 * wraped around some words
• use 1. and space or * and space to make lists
• separate difrent topics with “enter — enter”

Super simple right?

So simple in fact that markdown is just to quicky write simple stuff.

It makes plain, simple documents and PDF’s

But what if you need more features?

do you need to go back to word to suffer some more?

No of course you dont, because we have Latex.

(yes pronounced la-tech)

Latex documnents take more efort but the results are just beautiful.

The real profesional look you are looking for.

Do you think books are writen in MS Word? they likely sue latex instead.

Sience journals, Thesis and probably your math textbook are made in Latex.

Most universities recomend it for academic writing.

Easy to pick up but hard to master, but damm it is worth it!

Writing Latex documents is a marketable skill and it will be forever usefull.

Latex also has some game changing features like:

• It outputs PDF’s, so you will never have any compatibility issues.
• Advanced Math mode without it being colmplicated.
• Automaticly made table of contents.
• Automaticly traked figure system for images and examples.
• Automaticly tracked biliographies and refrences.
• Never worry about the desighn and formating, its made for you automaticly.
• Expandibility: Packages are avalable to expand the feature-set, so you can write music, make graphics, run python code and much more.
• It can even transform your allready made document into a presentation automaticly.

And to tie it all up nicely there is pandoc.

Pandoc is a simple program that transforms documents from one type to another.

For example, this slide presentation was made roughly in markdown, then transformed into reveal.js code, and finaly imported into slides.com.

This prosess createsa barebones presentation, but slides.com can easily manipulate styles and es easy enough to add finishing touches.

You can write all your notes in class in markdown because it is insanely fast and simple.

If the profesor needs you making a presentation of a sertain subject, you could simply: select the subject from your notes import it into pandoc and have a rough slideshow ready for you to present in one minute.

best of both worlds

Pandoc recognizes Latex code when he sees it, therefore you have full Latex suport and the simplicity of markdown, all in one!

werever you go.

Use Google Drive/Dropbox/Github to store your documents and use writeboxapps.com to write in markdown, sharelatex.com to make Latex documents and pandoc.org/try/ to convert them online.

On all platforms, Windows, iOS, iOSX, Android, Linux and even Windows Phone!

Offline versions available asswell.

So forget about word because This holly trinity of markdown, latex and pandock will teach you to focus and stop woring and love typesetting