WEBVTT captioned by sachac
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Hello, my name is Daniel Pinkston. I'm in my last year of high
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school, about to go to university. About two and a half years
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ago, I discovered Emacs. My life has now been separated into
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two chapters: before and after Emacs. How could this tool be
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so impactful? Well, you'll just have to see. I made this talk
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for people who ask questions like this, but don't know where
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to start. When I started using Emacs for school, it took me a
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long time to find what I liked. There wasn't many examples of
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a full process for an organization. This talk was made to
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guide students like me, those who wanted more from their
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software workflow that they can learn and adapt from. My
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main idea was essentially explained by Zaiste in his
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EmacsConf presentation in 2019. He said something to the
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effect of, one of the great parts about Doom Emacs as a
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starting point is that it shows beginners how different
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packages mesh with each other. He says that people often
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have trouble seeing how to develop workflows using the
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thousands of packages Emacs has. In this talk, I introduce
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some Emacs tools and how they work together to improve a
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student's academic workflow. Let us commence. If you are
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watching this talk and have never heard of Emacs, it's a
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customizable text editor. When you become more
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experienced, it becomes your entire operating system. You
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just live inside of Emacs. It's also free as in free pencils
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and open source, which means that you don't have to pay to
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download Emacs and its source code. Emacs doesn't charge
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you a monthly subscription, nor does it steal all of your
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information. Yeah, I know, it's pretty crazy. In this talk,
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I introduce some Emacs tools and how they work together to
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improve a student's academic workflow. Earlier I read this
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post on this website that said, I can only imagine the great
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things you'd be able to learn and retain in your brain thanks
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to the great Emacs ecosystem. You've made the best choice,
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with far-going implications. I promise you not once, not
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even subtly, have I ever regretted having invested in
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learning Emacs. It's the best gift anyone can present to
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themself. You will forever feel indebted to your younger
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self for this gift. I guarantee that. I think that this is a
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real testament to the true power of Emacs. There's simply no
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other software like it. It's a complete and fitting
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solution for those who are willing to master it. Hopefully
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by now you're invested in learning Emacs. But before we jump
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into the technicalities of everything, we should outline
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the main things that you need it to do as a student. The best
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students have their system figured out so that it can do
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these things quickly and efficiently. They should have no
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problem quickly organizing what they need to do along with
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capturing information from their classes. But you may be
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wondering, how does Emacs do all that? Well, it does it with
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Org Mode. It was built to be an outliner for note-taking and
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list management, exactly what a student needs. One of the
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key features is that it's plain text, which means that you
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can migrate it between computers, and it's not a
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proprietary format. For those of you who have heard of
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Markdown, Org is similar in that it's a markup language.
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However, it's a bit older, and it goes way beyond Markdown's
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simple text formatting, with its scheduling, task
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management, and organization features, all captured
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within plain text simplicity. This slide shows off one of my
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notes from a heavily customized Emacs window. Yours
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probably won't look like this from the start, but you can
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personalize its appearance with custom themes.
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It's finally time to get into the technicalities. What you
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need to do with your notes in Org Mode is create, search, and
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possibly publish them. I prefer Denote for creating my
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notes, but there are many Emacs packages for that. Denote is
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just lightweight and gets the job done. I used to use Org
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Roam, but I didn't need or use all of its features. I also use
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Anki, a free and open source flashcard program, but of
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course, I make all my flashcards in Org Mode. For searching,
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I often use find and grep, which are both standard
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utilities on Linux. Other operating systems probably have
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a tool to replicate this functionality. The final item is
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exporting. There are many scenarios in which I want to
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publish my notes to share them with teachers or peers. One of
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my favorite features of Org Mode is the exportability of the
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notes you make. This presentation was actually made in Org
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Mode, and so are all of my lab reports and essays for school. I
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also write my webpage articles in Org Mode, which a program
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called Hugo converts into static HTML. So far, you haven't
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actually seen what it's like to use these tools. Here's a
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quick demo of how I track what I need to do. First, I always
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open up my todo.org file in my denote directory. For school
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assignments, I have a heading under Inbox where I have
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entries for each class I'm enrolled in. Each class's
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heading has a tag on it, which the assignment inherits as a
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subheading. Here's an example assignment. I have a test in
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physics next next Wednesday and the deadline to finish
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studying for it is the day that I'm taking it. When I plan my
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studying, I run the keybind for org-schedule to schedule the
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day on which I will study it. I can also mark it as the highest
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priority, making it the most important thing to do. I can
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also open up my agenda to see my tasks. I've cleaned it up as to
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not reveal any of my nefarious plans. This agenda is
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customized, but there are many tutorials on how to do this.
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My agenda has been the most transforming part of my student
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experience, and I've gotten a lot better at managing what I
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need to do. Next, I'll show you what I like to do to take notes.
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The main entry point for a new note is always starting with
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M-x denote. You fill out a couple of customizable prompts
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that will ask for values of the note. I'll start by making a
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new note, which we'll call test note. Then we'll give it a key
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for what category it's under. For this, I usually put the
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subject of the class that I'm doing this note for, be it
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programming, English, history, or science. Try to keep
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them short. And then Shazam, we have ourselves a brand new
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note which we can start typing away in. The cool thing about
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the note is you don't have to manually name your note files.
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It uses a standard convention using the time, the title, and
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the keywords of the note to make it unique. You can even make a
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meta note, a note about notes, to show a list of notes under a
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certain keyword. The final step in creation is flashcards.
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There is a great package called Anki Editor that makes Emacs
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able to push cards into Anki. There isn't much to
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overcomplicate here, it's just content on front and back,
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sometimes with images and complete the phrase. You can also
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set up LaTeX math formatting, but I don't really use it that
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much. If you're living in Emacs all the time, you may want
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some creature comforts. These are some of my favorite. Org
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Download is a package that allows you to paste images from
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your clipboard into an org file.
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Logos is a text narrowing tool that helps you restrict what
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text you can see and focus on what you're writing. It extends
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Emacs default narrowing, also adding functionality for
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quickly switching to headings for a presentation look. It
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can remove your mode line and center your text for better
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focus. org-fragtog allows you to move between previews of
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your LaTeX formulas and the unrendered syntax.
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pdf-view-mode is a fully fledged PDF reader, complete with
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annotations and org syntax, highlighting, and clickable
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links.
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Something you may want to consider is digital versus
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handwritten notes. There have been several talks in the
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past about how to integrate handwritten notes into Emacs,
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such as retyping them or scanning them in with an OCR tool. I
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don't think that type notes are the only way that you should
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take notes, but if you do try writing, at least get some nice
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stationery. I've seen people ask online to YouTubers and
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Twitch streamers asking, what is your keyboard? What is
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your window manager? I understand that they're curious,
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but cosplaying as a productive person by using the same
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tools won't accomplish anything. Emacs will not make you a
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productive person. It can be a significant time investment
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because of how customizable it is. However, I believe it
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will make it easier for you to be productive, as it certainly
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has for me. This was just an example workflow to show
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prospective students how they can use Emacs for their
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needs.
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Even if you don't end up using Emacs in the end, you can still
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apply most of its ideas to other software. It just won't be as
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customizable and extensible as Emacs is. Thank you for
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listening to my talk. It's been a great pleasure to finally
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take part in this conference in some capacity, and I'm glad I
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was given a chance. To all the students who may try Emacs in
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the future, good luck because there might not be any going
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back. If you have any questions, feel free to shoot me an
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email. Thank you for your time.
