A simple markdown-template for (lecture) notes and recaps.
While studying, I've mainly learned by writing my own recap of the whole lecture. Although I really like using LaTeX for writing, it can be quite cumbersome for notes with a lot boilerplate for enumerations, itemizations etc.
That's why I started using markdown in combimation with pandoc to simplify note-taking with the simple syntax of markdown and generating goodlooking TeX-like documents.
I've put this up as a repo, because maybe someone will find this template useful, too :)
So, basically this is just markdown. Clone it and use one of the numerous ways of compiling it. However, I opted for using pandoc and vscode.
For this, you have to install Pandoc and Visual Studio Code if you don't have it already.
I'm using vscode to write the recaps, mainly because there are a lot of great extensions which really ease working with markdown. The packages I'm currently using:
- Markdown All in One: Great tools, commands and shortcuts around writing markdown.
- Markdown Paste: Makes adding images to your recap a breeze. You can easily add paste images directly from the clipboard into the markdown and give it a title/caption. The image will automatically be put in a specified directory.
- markdownlint because, well... linting your code is always a good idea :)
Also, I have added a custom task for compiling all .md-files under the src-directory that can be triggered with ctrl + shift + b. This will just wildcard the filenames, so simply order your markdown files by preceding them with the section-number. Also, this will generate a TOC and print the document in the two-column layout, as I personally found this easier to use for learning. However, this command can easily be adjusted.
There is also a config for markdownlint, as I decided to exclude the following rules:
- MD025: Because when using pandoc and a yaml-Header, a document-title is already specified. Thus, the top-level headings can be used multiple times.
- MD013: Because it makes writing (and reading) a lot of text very cumbersome when you manually break the lines to stay in the limit.
Using pandoc for compiling markdown has the advantage that you're able to use latex in your document. I added a yaml-header for setting different variables such as title, author etc. in the src/00_intro.md-file. There are also latex-headers for lstlisting so source-code can be rendered nicely with the two-column layout using markdown-syntax (fenced code in backticks, stating the language on top).
As long equations can make problems (especially in two-columns), I also added the breqn-Package that allows to handle long equations differently. Either use \begin{dmath*} yourlongequation \end{dmath*} (leave the * out if you want numbered eq) manually for selected long equations or uncomment the two renewcommand-options in the header to set EVERY equation using breqn (which might line-break equations a bit too eagerly).
Currently, there is a problem using tables inside the two-column layout with pandoc. I'm still to find a proper solution for this...