r/LaTeX • u/super_boogie_crapper • 3d ago

Markdown Cornell Notes

https://github.com/forloop11/markdown-cornell-notes

A LaTeX and Markdown build pipeline that generates printable Cornell style note pages for meetings. Each page carries a header with topic, date, attendees, and time, a large notes panel with a cue column beside it, and a summary band below, all left blank for handwriting on the printout.

Header fields live in YAML and note content lives in Markdown, so the LaTeX template itself never needs hand editing. Python generator scripts convert both into TeX fragments, pandoc handles the Markdown to LaTeX conversion, and a single make command produces a PDF named automatically from the topic, date, and location fields. Content is measured and paginated automatically, with optional directives for forcing page breaks and for routing text into the cue column or summary band of a specific page.

The project also includes a Streamlit editor app that places the header form, a CodeMirror Markdown editor, and a live PDF preview side by side in the browser. The editor adds a formatting toolbar, slash command snippets, and autocomplete for asset paths and code fence languages. Its JavaScript bundle is vendored rather than loaded from a CDN so the app works offline, and it relies on native browser spellcheck rather than any app side state.

Built with Python, LaTeX, pandoc, Streamlit, CodeMirror, JavaScript, and Make. Released under the MIT license.

12 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

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6

u/Hairy_Glove2064 3d ago

Interesting but since this is a LaTeX community why couldn't I just use LaTeX since \section{} is not that much harder to write than #

1

u/super_boogie_crapper 3d ago

I have not seen LaTeX packages output easily to Cornell format layout. I wrote Python that translates the input Pandoc Markdown format to LaTeX. I added a few new decorators for adding to the Cue and the Summary boxes. This is much more than H1, H2, H3.

2

u/Hairy_Glove2064 3d ago

I see how it could be useful. But I think it is rare someone will download a app to specifically take cornell notes. Is cornell notes that common also?

1

u/super_boogie_crapper 2d ago

I feel it is useful. I started the project for personal use, but figured someone else would like it too. So. I made it open source.