[HN Gopher] My Mathematics PhD research workflow: LaTeX notes an...
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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!)
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