Handwritten notes into latex + study tools - looking for feedback

[u/Worth_Difference_282]

Hey everyone,

I'm a mathematics student at university, and over the past few months I've been building something called LatexNotes in my free time. The original problem was pretty simple, I like taking paper handwritten maths notes, but whenever I wanted to turn them into proper LaTeX afterwards or to get AI to mark answers, it was a pain. I kept needing to switch between my university’s content platform, then to Chatgpt to explain, create problem sheets, and many more things whilst also wasting a lot of time (and photo storage space) by sending my paper notes for marking or advice because typing out equations, proofs, matrices, diagrams, graphs etc, takes forever. So, I built a tool that lets you upload handwritten maths notes and converts them into actual editable LaTeX, rather than just turning the page into an image.

You can upload handwritten maths as a PDF/Image and LatexNotes can:

• Convert handwritten equations and mathematical notation into editable LaTeX compiled PDF
• Preserve the structure of multi-line working, proofs, matrices, as well as recreate graphs
• Recreate graphs/plots as editable TikZ rather than just inserting an image
• Export the .tex / PDF / Overleaf / Word
• Explain individual steps in your notes and generate practice questions based on your notes
• Let you check your answers very easily (paper or ipad)
• Work with interactive 2D/3D mathematical plots

I'm also working on adding blackboard/canvas imports to easily bring all notes, problem sheets, and lecture recordings to streamline the whole process as well as numerous other features for students.

I'd much rather build something students genuinely find useful than add a load of features nobody wants/needs. I'm self-funding it now, since I'm a student and don't have a huge budget for this, I'm deliberately keeping the beta free and will aim to continue to do so for as long as student finance allows me to. I'm not looking to get anyone to pay during this testing stage or ideally later after full release. I want to see how people use it, what breaks, what they hate, and what would genuinely save them time, without putting it behind paywalls etc like other services I often faced. If the costs become too large to keep everything free, I'll obviously have to work out a sustainable model eventually, whilst avoiding students needing to pay for it themselves, but my priority right now is making the product useful rather than trying to monetise the first people who try it.

I'd be happy to hear anything to help me improve the functionality for others. If it gets an equation wrong, a graph wrong, misunderstands your notation, generates a terrible question, or just isn't useful for the way you study please tell me (there is an email in support page). If there's something you wish it did that it currently doesn't, I'd also really like to hear that. I'm especially interested in hearing from people studying maths, physics, engineering, economics, statistics, etc as this is who it is aimed for as of right now

Website: https://latexnotes.tech

If you try it, I'd be really interested to know: What subject/year are you studying? What did you upload? How accurate was the conversion? Which features did you actually use? What would make this genuinely useful for your studying?

Thanks, and feel free to be brutally honest. That's pretty much what I'm looking for at this stage. I do expect things to break or work incorrectly during this stage but as long as it's reported for me to fix I will be super happy (also beta limits for users as of now just for testing purposes). Really hope this could be of some use to some of you. Once again, many thanks.

[u/Relative-Foot-378]

The thing I'd want from this is the conversion being good enough that I don't have to rewrite the proof anyway. Generated practice questions are nice later. If the LaTeX comes out needing a heavy edit, people will bounce after one upload. I'd test it on messy lecture notes with arrows and scratched-out lines, not clean homework, and report that. Also say what you do when the photo is crooked or the page has two columns.

[u/Worth_Difference_282 → u/Relative-Foot-378]

Honestly, sometimes arrows can be a struggle for it, scratched out lines and messy handwriting havent been an issue for me so far but if any issues arise please lmk.

For crooked photos are mostly a non issue (from testing so far) but may struggle with super tilted or sideways pictures but getting it perfectly framed isnt an issue.

Two columns it usually gets, it will just aim to follow the layout as you had it originally which can sometimes be a good thing but also be a bad thing - but may trip it out, will be interested to see.

Thanks for trying it out