TITLE: What software and/or language to use to take Math lecture notes?
QUESTION [27 upvotes]: I have a terrible hand-writing and I'm very good at typing, so I had an idea about taking my math lecture notes using a computer.
I've tried using a simple syntax (using purely ASCII) but it's getting harder and harder, so I need something a bit more sophisticated.
Friend suggested Latex, but said that I probably won't be able to write it fast enough to use it in "real-time". It also has a quite learning curve.
I'm on Mac os X. What would you suggest?

REPLY [2 votes]: With pen&paper, iPad's camera and my fingers -- but hopefully in the future with VimLatexSuite and Vim but I am too slow in using it although I can touch-type much faster than average people.

For a very long time, I have tried to use Vim here but also looked for Emacs. However, the Vim LatexSuite developers have not responded to problems such as mentioned here (a script which comes with all kind of macros a bit like with TeXShop in Mac but ready macros and platform-independent) so I take notes with normal pen&paper and then with iPad photograph them. You can see how I take notes here with iPad. Someties during lectures, lecturer or a co-worker just mentions a good book -- ok I will take a photo of it and add it to my notes. Sometimes during lectures I want to screeshot something let say from Wikipedia, ok I will do it. I do this kind of note-taking with Notes Pluss -app in iPad but trying to use more GoodNotes because faster to use, I miss so much during lectures while using Notes Plus because slow to use. With iPhone 4/5, you can however take this kind of images faster because the images can be synced fast to iCloud so making the use of Notes Plus a bit less painless -- its developer has however said that he tries to simplify the UI in the future.

I use vim most of the time but I think inefficinetly, particularly when not getting any help to problems like above. I try to get better in it by solving puzzles in services such as VimGolf.com here.

I am still not satisfied in how I take notes, I feel there must be better ways -- still investigating.
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