What software and/or language to use to take Math lecture notes? [closed]

I have a terrible hand-writing and I'm very good at typing, so I had an idea about taking my math lecture notes using a computer.

I've tried using a simple syntax (using purely ASCII) but it's getting harder and harder, so I need something a bit more sophisticated.

Friend suggested Latex, but said that I probably won't be able to write it fast enough to use it in "real-time". It also has a quite learning curve.

I'm on Mac os X. What would you suggest?

Solution 1:

I personally only take math lecture notes in $\LaTeX$; there are several benefits to doing this and I don't think it's as hard to learn as you think it is. I certainly don't have a problem with keeping up with lecturers. See this blog post and some of the answers at this MO question.

Solution 2:

Qiaochu's suggestion of LaTeX is also what I would recommend. In this vein, I find it useful to define large numbers of keyboard shortcuts (this can be easily done in vim, for instance, which can be downloaded for Mac OS X). For instance, I map "5thm" to a theorem environment, and I usually have Greek letters expand when about half of them is typed (e.g. \alp -> \alpha). I have done this (cf. my website for examples of notes with source code) and don't generally have a problem keeping up with the lecturer. Commutative diagrams are slightly trickier, but they can be done. If you want to live-TikZ your notes, I'm afraid I can't help; but you should learn LaTeX first!

Using a word processing system is likely to be much slower for typesetting symbols. If the learning curve for LaTeX bothers you (and it's not that bad with a little practice), you might try LyX.