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This is not strictly mathematical question but related one. In university I made notes on paper but notebooks got lost and I can not drag box of notes wherever I go. So I switched to making notes in txt files but I can not write nice looking formulas in txt files (or markdown). Then I switched to google docs It is wyswig tool which is very nice but it does very limited support for latex. Of course I could use latex and generate pdf but it is no wyswig which means I need two files: one to edit other to see what I did. So I wonder how you solved this problem.

Trismegistos
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    You might be interested in https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-1/ – Vasily Mitch Nov 01 '19 at 11:23
  • I made notes on paper and did not lose notebooks. They are still legible somewhere in my cellar, something I cannot say about documents produced that long ago - How do you avoid losing the device you edit files on? – Hagen von Eitzen Nov 01 '19 at 11:24
  • In this day and age, I still use pen and paper and notebooks. I could use some app or even a tablet with a stylus, but they also have their drawbacks. Just use pen and paper and don't lose your notebooks. That would be my approach ... – Matti P. Nov 01 '19 at 11:24
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    https://mathoverflow.net/questions/12638/taking-lecture-notes-in-lectures is related. Also, https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/613994/up-to-date-advice-on-the-best-way-to-take-notes-maths and https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/28550/best-software-to-take-math-notes and https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/3044891/how-do-you-like-to-take-store-math-notes – Gerry Myerson Nov 01 '19 at 11:28
  • @HagenvonEitzen I make backups. Nowadays I make backups zip them and send to google drive. You can also dedicate some external usb hdd as a backup drive. If not used that often they can last quite long. – Trismegistos Nov 01 '19 at 12:04
  • Surely you need pen and paper as it's quicker to make sketches and scribble down ideas (e.g. for proofs).

    You just have to organise your notes by topic/year/etc into folders using separators...

     – Adam Rubinson Nov 01 '19 at 12:09

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I've been using Word with its Latex Environment, as it was the best compromise between speed and capabilities that I've found.

I'd say its Latex environment is an upgrade to what Google Docs can do, as it's basically a limited version of Latex (with quite a few bugs that will probably never be fixed), but it keeps the interactive style (you can edit the formulas both as latex-code or go in the displayed formulas and change stuff).

For my private notes, using Word this way suffices. What you get is not nearly as neat as what would be possible with Latex, and you'll definitely hit walls (but at least I don't hit them often enough that it would make me switch). But the WYSIWYG-nature makes it quite fast to get the notes to look "almost" as you want.

If you don't care about the possibility to search in your documents or to edit them, you can also take handwritten notes and then digitalize them. Using a handy camera it should be quite quick to turn a note digital, and there are blocks that come with special apps that automatically take care of cropping and rotating.

Yet another option would be graphic tablet (+ wireless keyboard). In terms of taking notes, I doubt there's anything that can measure up to the speed of this combination, though getting a good graphic tablet might be quite an investment.

Sudix
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