hand writing with stylus math symbols to computer

[thirdworldking]

hi i got a surface pro 3 and i want to be able to draw math symbols and numbers so that it goes straight into my computer and the into a word document or something similar.i tried using math input panel but it is ver unreliable and it takes ages in correcting that i would rather do it without the stylus. is tthere any alternative software for this?

[mackncheesiest]

Is converting it to computer-text a must have? Or is leaving it in handwriting fine?

[thirdworldking]

Is converting it to computer-text a must have? Or is leaving it in handwriting fine?

it needs to be converted

[mackncheesiest]

Hmm, I would suggest OneNote (Desktop Version) that allows you to select writing and choose "Ink to Math", but it probably uses the same system that the math input panel does, so it might not actually be any better.

 

Not sure I can be of any help here then, haha. I use my Surface Pro 2 for math all the time, but I'm able to leave it in handwriting in my case. Sorry! Hopefully someone else might come along that's a bit more helpful.

[SteveGrabowski]

Word is garbage for writing math. Learn LaTeX. It's super easy and it's how math books are written now.

 

https://tobi.oetiker.ch/lshort/lshort.pdf

 

It's no harder to learn to write than HTML.

[thirdworldking]

Hmm, I would suggest OneNote (Desktop Version) that allows you to select writing and choose "Ink to Math", but it probably uses the same system that the math input panel does, so it might not actually be any better.

 

Not sure I can be of any help here then, haha. I use my Surface Pro 2 for math all the time, but I'm able to leave it in handwriting in my case. Sorry! Hopefully someone else might come along that's a bit more helpful.

the problem is for assignments it needs to look proffesional.but for normal class time i could probably just keep them hand written

[thirdworldking]

Word is garbage for writing math. Learn LaTeX. It's super easy and it's how math books are written now.

 

https://tobi.oetiker.ch/lshort/lshort.pdf

 

It's no harder to learn to write than HTML.

im downloading now, thanks for the suggestion ill let you know what i think when i get some good use out of it

[olbaze]

Here's another vouch for LaTeX. I had to learn LaTeX to write my BSc thesis in math. I ended up dropping both Word and PowerPoint and haven't looked back. For anyone who's planning to write math, you'll really, really want LaTeX. Not only is Word clunky and time-consuming, but there's also tons of things Word simply cannot do.

 

Personally, I took notes during classes with pen and paper, but started using LaTeX for assignments as soon as I had learned the basics. Since I use LaTeX a lot, I ended up making a custom template that I use as a basis, so that I can pretty much write my text on any platform I wish, copy-paste it into the LaTeX editor of my choice, build and get a finished document.

 

LaTeX is a godsend because not only can it handle pretty much any scientific notation you throw at it, but it does most of the formatting for you. Of course, there will be times when you'll want to customize things like chapter numbering, but that's pretty easy to do. And while it isn't necessarily WYSIWYG, adding things like titles and page breaks is very simple and rather intuitive. Not to mention that most of the editors will have extensive menus for basic functions like that.

[thirdworldking]

Here's another vouch for LaTeX. I had to learn LaTeX to write my BSc thesis in math. I ended up dropping both Word and PowerPoint and haven't looked back. For anyone who's planning to write math, you'll really, really want LaTeX. Not only is Word clunky and time-consuming, but there's also tons of things Word simply cannot do.

 

Personally, I took notes during classes with pen and paper, but started using LaTeX for assignments as soon as I had learned the basics. Since I use LaTeX a lot, I ended up making a custom template that I use as a basis, so that I can pretty much write my text on any platform I wish, copy-paste it into the LaTeX editor of my choice, build and get a finished document.

 

LaTeX is a godsend because not only can it handle pretty much any scientific notation you throw at it, but it does most of the formatting for you. Of course, there will be times when you'll want to customize things like chapter numbering, but that's pretty easy to do. And while it isn't necessarily WYSIWYG, adding things like titles and page breaks is very simple and rather intuitive. Not to mention that most of the editors will have extensive menus for basic functions like that.

it sounds good, how does it differ form word, and how does it make writing out math equations easier?

[olbaze]

it sounds good, how does it differ form word, and how does it make writing out math equations easier?

 

It differs from Word in all kinds of ways, mostly because Word is a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor, whereas LaTeX isn't. Think of LaTeX as a programming language.

 

It makes writing math equations easier because a) it actually works and B) you do not need to deal with resizing the math stuff to fit the text, it's done automatically. Personally, I used Word for a simple high school level paper in math that involved vectors (so lots of subscripts and matrices) and it was a major pain and the output was ugly. In fact, some of the stuff I've done with LaTeX, such as nested subscripts (subscripts with subscripts) cannot be done with Word at all.

 

LaTeX does have a bit of a learning curve, which comes from the fact that it's not a WYSIWYG editor. However, most of the stuff is fairly common sense. And while it took me a while to learn the basics, I'm damn glad I did, as LaTeX is immeasurably valuable to me as  writing instrument for anything that needs to either look nice or contain math in it. If you're actually interested in learning LaTeX, there's plenty of useful resources and tutorials that help you get started.

 

Here's an example of what LaTeX input/output looks like in use, with the editor visible as well: http://goo.gl/otsyAr

[SteveGrabowski]

it sounds good, how does it differ form word, and how does it make writing out math equations easier?

 

In LaTeX it's really easy to write professional looking documents, as LaTeX handles the layout for you. All you write is the content. Another thing I love about LaTeX is the ability to define your own macros. For instance, the way to write a derivative dy/dx explicitly in math mode is \frac{dy}{dx}, but I can define a macro \df so that \df{y}{x} gives the same result, by writing

 

\define{df}[2]{\frac{d#1}{d#2}}

 

Big deal right? I have saved two whole characters of typing to write \df{y}{x} instead of \frac{dy}{dx}. But what if I decide I'd rather write derivatives as y'(x) instead of dy/dx? All I have to do is change the definition of the macro \df in one place. E.g., I could redefine it as

 

\define{df}[2]{#1'(#2)}

 

and now \df{y}{x} expands to y'(x). What a pain in the ass it would be to go explicitly change \frac{dy}{dx} to y'(x) everywhere I wrote the derivative in my document.

 

Here is an example of some lecture notes I have been writing up for a quantum mechanics course to give you an idea of what LaTeX can look like:

 

https://drive.google.com/viewerng/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxob21lcnNub3Rlc3xneDozMGZmYTZiNzEyNTNhZmRi

 

Here are some notes in a different style I wrote for a multivariable calculus course:

 

https://drive.google.com/viewerng/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxob21lcnNub3Rlc3xneDo2YWVkODUwODUxMjcyODMy

 

The two completely different layouts were changed by maybe one of two lines in each document. LaTeX lets you focus on just writing the paper instead of writing it and trying to make it look nice.