To make note tak­ing using LaTeX vi­able, I had four goals in mind:

• Writ­ing text and math­e­mat­i­cal for­mu­las in LaTeX should be as fast as the lec­tur­er writ­ing on a black­board: no delay is ac­cept­able.
• Draw­ing fig­ures should be al­most as fast as the lec­tur­er.
• Man­ag­ing notes, i.e. adding a note, com­pil­ing all my notes, com­pil­ing the last two lec­tures, search­ing in notes, etc. should be easy and quick.
• An­no­tat­ing pdf doc­u­ments using LaTeX should be pos­si­ble for when I want to write notes along­side a pdf doc­u­ment.
  This blog post will focus on the first item: writ­ing LaTeX.