full image - Repost: Questions about note-taking in Emacs with AUCTeX and Org-mode/Org-roam (from Reddit.com, Questions about note-taking in Emacs with AUCTeX and Org-mode/Org-roam)
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Parts of this post probably shouldn't be a topic of this sub as they're concerned with note-taking in general so I'm sorry in advance. Feel free to refer me to other subs.I study physics and take a fair amount of various notes, but after discovering Org-roam and the Zettelkasten method, I have been thinking that my workflow is very rigid and just sub-par in general. Some of my "strategies" of how I approach note-taking might sound obviously flawed so any hints on that front are very welcome.I have been using AUCTeX to write up my notes in LaTeX for some time now. My workflow generally consists of reading various textbooks (and research papers) and creating a LaTeX "project" (a modular document) for a single textbook, which sounds kind of awful, I know. But this way I can take notes on said textbook, solve problems and write up their solutions. I also have a couple of custom files (preambles, files with custom macros, maybe even some custom classes in the near future, etc.) which I reuse between "projects" so as to keep my workflow and definitions consistent.With that said, I find this strategy rather lacking for one main reason: it would be a hassle to navigate these "projects" as their number grows with time, since they are bound to their respective textbooks, and I think this is the crux of my overall strategy. One solution would be to create bigger "projects" based on subject (mathematics, physics, etc.), but I guess there are some problems with this approach as well, as some topics cannot be easily categorized into a single subject.In the end, I take notes to learn, but I would also like to have the ability to navigate, edit and expand them as needed. In essence, I would like to build a "second brain".And that's where Org-roam comes in. It let's you build a personal knowledge system using plain .org files, which I find very appealing. And since it is possible to export .org files to .tex files, I am thinking of making a switch. But there are a couple of things that need to be addressed:Books (and thus .tex files) are linear by nature while Org-roam offers a "network of concepts" experience. It would be easy to export big .tex files to PDF, but what about .org files that are used by Org-roam, also known as nodes? Last time I tried to do a PDF export of a single .org node, which has references to other nodes, I got a user-error about inability to resolve links, which makes sense since those links are just IDs given by Org-roam to different nodes. In the end, I would like to have the ability to export my notes to PDF.Customization. With AUCTeX, this is straightforward: you can create various custom files and input/include them into your LaTeX "project". But what about using custom LaTeX preambles, macros and classes in Org-mode? I researched this a bit and I think that I haven't found an easy way to, for instance, use a custom preamble.tex file as a preamble when exporting .org to PDF.My main question is this: given my previous considerations, should I just stick to AUCTeX for the more technical content (and possibly use Org for other things), or is it possible to achieve everything with Org + Org-roam?I don't mind using AUCTeX when writing LaTeX. In fact, I sometimes actually enjoy tinkering with .tex files. What I am on the fence about the most is:The "linearity" of LaTeX (the "bad" in the long-term, I think) versus the "network-ality?" (the "good") of Org-roam.Customizability of my notes.Thanks for the help!
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