[HN Gopher] My Mathematics PhD research workflow: LaTeX notes an... ___________________________________________________________________ My Mathematics PhD research workflow: LaTeX notes and instant pdf referencing Author : todsacerdoti Score : 50 points Date : 2022-04-10 20:51 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (castel.dev) (TXT) w3m dump (castel.dev) | lallysingh wrote: | I wonder if those planning to stay in academia after grad school | are more willing to invest in their own tooling like this. | rcap wrote: | Author here, if you have any questions, feel free to ask them. | | It really is amazing how hard it is just to retrieve the | currently opened pdf file and its page number in a pdf viewer. | Some pdf viewers (Like Zathura) provide this via DBus, but even | very common ones like Evince don't. I managed to find a way using | gvfs, although it's a bit of a hack. | | For others (e.g. Mendeley), I have no idea on how to do this... | Anybody have ideas? it is Qt based, maybe I can hook into that | via some debugging tool? | 533474 wrote: | Try emacs and org-mode sometime. Configurability is off the | charts and vi keybindings are easily configurable (and so are | the snippets). I loved the workflow, I believe that a mind like | yours will also find emacs elisp captivating and I would love | to see what you could come up with in that much more flexible | ecosystem (I am a former Vim evangelist) | hollerith wrote: | What does org mode have to do with the problem where you have | a document open in a PDF viewer and you want to retrieve the | location of the document in the file system and what page is | currently showing in the viewer's window? | dancsi wrote: | I guess it will be easier to get it working with Zotero, as | it's open source, and I think it even supports custom plug-ins. | bryanph_ wrote: | Specifically being able to create a deep link to a passage is a | very powerful capability indeed. The friction required to look up | a paper and navigate to the specific passage for a given | reference can really be so high that we just end up avoiding it | altogether I feel. Kudos to you for trying to solve this problem! | | I personally find LaTeX a little too friction-full (is that a | word?) on the input side. The output looks beautiful but the lack | of feedback when writing stuff keeps me from actually adding | stuff to it. Although your daily notes seems like it might help | with this tendency a little bit. | | This is a problem I'm currently trying to solve with my current | project (https://topictrails.com/ if you're interested). | alan-hn wrote: | Personally for feedback I use editors like overleaf or the | extension for vscode that autocompilea and displays a PDF next | to the working TeX file. I prefer it over something like LyX or | waiting to compile manually. | adhesive_wombat wrote: | I just wish there was a good way to have something like Zeal[1] | for PDFs. Navigating a big pile of huge datasheets and manuals (a | processor TRM can be 5000 pages!) is such a huge pain and that's | assuming they have decent TOCs, which many do not. | | [1]: https://zealdocs.org | gsatic wrote: | I use pdfgrep a lot. | | Probably possible to convert pdfs to html (with the default pdf | tools on nix - pdftotext pdf2txt et al) and pull them into | zeal. | godelski wrote: | Does anyone have a good reference for Tikz? I feel like I'm | pretty good at it (at least better than most my peers) but I also | believe it takes a significant amount of time to create | interesting pictures and do even basic things that PPT or other | basic tools can do easily. I want the full editing power of tikz | but doing the basic parts is tough (same with manim, though lower | barrier to entry). | | As for writing documents with lots of math, absolutely no | problem. I can churn that our faster than peers can with Word. | ivan_ah wrote: | The best way to TikZ is to copy-paste from previous figures | you've created. | | The second best is to look for a similar figure on TeXample | https://texample.net/tikz/examples/ or stack overflow | https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/tikz-pgf | | The third best option is to use squared paper to draw by hand, | then transfer hand-drawn stuff into TikZ code. It's slow as | hell, but works well if you build up a collection of components | you can copy-paste into other figs later. | | There are also some GUI tools you could try: | https://www.mathcha.io/ | https://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/cheunen/freetikz/freetikz.htm... | https://tikzit.github.io/ etc. (more links in this thread | https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/84890/does-there-exi... | ) | hexomancer wrote: | You may also want to check out sioyek which is an open source PDF | viewer specifically designed for reading research papers and | textbooks. | | https://github.com/ahrm/sioyek | | Disclaimer: I am the developer of sioyek | [deleted] | retskrad wrote: | I looked at the math in the article and I asked myself, what | compels people to choose this path for their career? Nothing | about it looks appealing. It looks like a bunch of gibberish for | 99% of humanity and only 1% of people willingly go to school to | learn this stuff. I have a lot of respect for people who have | jobs involving this level of math and physics so dummies like me | have the ability to type out this comment. | MarcelOlsz wrote: | I've been trying to learn math for years but truly have no idea | where to begin. I started with Kiselev's Geometry and Gelfand's | Algebra. I used to hate Math. When I read Lockharts Lament some | years ago and it brought me to tears. Ever since then I've had | a big appreciation for it but no real time to get into it. | Gelfand's Algebra is really cool because it starts with the | most basic problems ever that a 3rd grader can do, and works | it's way up. It's worth checking out! | the_svd_doctor wrote: | Math for the sake of math can be very self fulfilling. Like an | intellectual hobby (it just takes a lot of work and energy). | Twisol wrote: | This only answers a small piece of your question, but it's | important to realize that the mathematical notation you see is | only how mathematics is recorded and communicated. Most of what | goes into _doing_ mathematics happens in your head. "Doing" | mathematics requires you to know what the object of study is, | and what tools have historically been brought to bear on it, | and these are communicated and taught via notation. But once | you've internalized those concepts, the notation doesn't | usually play a significant role. Yes, you may trial your ideas | with some calculations, and once you're convinced of something | you need to prove it with some degree of rigor. But you don't | usually set out to prove something you don't already have some | reason to believe in -- it's not like the math workbooks you | may have encountered in school. (I second the sibling reply's | mention of Lockhart's Lament!) ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-04-10 23:00 UTC)