[[!sidebar content=""]] [[!meta title="How to incorporate handwritten notes into Emacs Orgmode"]] [[!meta copyright="Copyright © 2022 Bala Ramadurai"]] [[!inline pages="internal(2022/info/handwritten-nav)" raw="yes"]] [[!img /i/2022-handwritten-title.png alt="title" size="600x"]] # How to incorporate handwritten notes into Emacs Orgmode Bala Ramadurai (his/him, ) [[!inline pages="internal(2022/info/handwritten-before)" raw="yes"]] [[!img /i/2022-handwritten-abstract.png alt="title" style="max-width: 100%; height: auto"]] Research suggests that note taking is most effective when done by hand. Yes, handwritten notes. Certainly, typewritten or typed out notes are more efficient, however notes written by hand are retained by the human brain much longer. Integrating handwritten notes into a computer leaned productivity workflow is tricky. Also, in terms of hardware, if all you have is a smartphone, then we need to deal with the situation a bit differently. This talk will introduce to you a simple system to integrate handwritten notes into your org-mode (Emacs) based productivity workflow. - Gist of the problem of dealing with handwritten notes - Advantages of handwritten notes - Emacs org mode workflow - Option 1: Hardware for handwriting not available - Option 2: Hardware for handwriting available # Discussion ## Notes - Tesseract is a free and open source tool to do OCR (may or may not convert handwriting) - - Karl Voit: I\'m not practicing handwritten OCR at the moment. From what I\'ve read, offline handwriting OCR (offline OCR = not recognizing while writing but form a (scanned) document) is only implemented in a good way in highly proprietary services such as Microsoft OneNote and Evernote and Apple Notes. Since I don\'t use those services on purpose (), I don\'t have personal experience. I\'m still hoping that there will be a FOSS solution one fine day. - I\'m (rarely) taking notes on my BOOX Note Air e-ink tablet (which I love). It has decent on-device offline-OCR but it\'s really tedious to use it. So usually, I keep the notes as PDF file and don\'t care to OCR it. Not great but at the moment I can live with it. - After all: I\'m much faster when typing on my keyboard () - so if there is no graphical information to be captured, I\'m faster typing in Org mode than writing by hand. - \-- another potential OCR solution that is FOSS, but supported only on Windows OS - mathpix seems to support OCR now as well: - - - Leo Vivier owns an e-ink tablet: Boox Max Lumi (almost A4-size, bigger brother of Boox Note Air) - Digital pens and digitizing platforms help to get your notes from analogue into digital form:  - [[https://www.wired.com/gallery/best-smart-pens/]{.underline}](https://www.wired.com/gallery/best-smart-pens/) - Also, livescript uses special pens and tablets (erasable and correctable) - [LiveScribe](https://www.amazon.com/Livescribe-Single-Subject-Notebook-4-pack/dp/B001AALJ1I/ref=asc\_df\_B001AALJ1I/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=167151358503&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=14286771041209503377&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9027973&hvtargid=pla-359920653567&psc=1) ## Questions and answers - Q: How do you link the notes together so that you could search through them in the future? - A: From text device or text then into an OCR method then through Org-Roam. Paper to Jpeg photo from phone to OneNote to Org Mode system. - Q: Is it necessary to OCR your handwriting or change the way you write to use your workflow?  - A: Yes, you have to do this to facilitate indexing and linking.  - Q: What about Searching notes, notes to text while being offline - A: only proprietary software like Google Keep and Microsoft OneNote can -        search with OCR, as far as Bala is aware - Q:Those articles on notetaking seem interesting. Could we get a link for them - A: Will be Linked in this document above after talk - Q:Have you looked at taking handwritted notes on a tablet like Xournal++ - A: Not yet, - Q: Something to think about is handwritten and org transcribed notes de-duplication for searching, do you want one or the other, both? - A: - side note: org-remark could be useful for this - Q: How fancy has your handwritten notes import been to org mode, Bullets, TODO , org tables etc\... - A: Bala uses an asterisk on paper when writing tasks, and makes them into org tasks during manual transcription. Would be really cool to OCR org constructs from paper. TODO items etc. - Handwriting helps thinking, speaking with an audience. Computers have led to handwriting being less important, but Bala thinks they\'re very efficient and important :) - Q: How often do you instead type in and summarize your notes? Would you consider that a suitable approach for yourself, e.g. at the end of the day? - A: when in a hurry, Bala types notes directly into Org Mode. - not yet established a habit of daily journaling but wants to - handwriting can be easier depending on language/script, non-Roman script [[!inline pages="internal(2022/info/handwritten-after)" raw="yes"]] [[!inline pages="internal(2022/info/handwritten-nav)" raw="yes"]] [[!taglink CategoryOrgMode]]