PDAs as a College Notebook?

Eugene asks: "G'day everyone! Here's the deal, I study Engineering in college and therefore, I have to write down LOTS of mathematical formulae and such. Now I heard that students of Law/English/etc. find great use of various PDAs as a notebook replacement(that's pen&paper notebook). I'd like to know if there's a PDA software-solution for quickly writing down math expressions( Something like the equation editor shipped with MS-Word - but if possible with a more intuitive way of entering data). All I could find so far are lots of calculators, that do little in the way of easily entering equations and storing them for later review." Well, that would be one less thing to lug around in the ole backpack. Now if we could only get textboox in digital form...

Comments

Raw handwriting (not recognition)

[pete-classic]

I am very skeptical that you are going to find a way to enter formulae as fast as your prof. can write them on the board.

I'd think that a hybrid that captures handwriting as a bitmap for later transcription would be ideal.

I swear I have seen something like the IBM TransNote but more like a normal (paper) notepad with a Palm attached to it and less like a notebook (PC) with a notepad next to it.

Good luck!

-Peter

Star Office

[heliocentric]

The equation editor program thing in star office allows you to type in equations, and you can type into your paper an equation and then highlight it and click to insert an equation, thus tranforming your text into the equation. Consider this string that makes the obvious pretty G(z):

G(z) =
{sum from {n>=0} left( 4^n + 6 right) z^n + 10z + 13 } over {left( 1 - p_1 z right) left( 1 - p_2 z right)}
~=~
{ left( 4^0 + 6 right) z^0 + left(4 + 6 right) z + sum from {n>=2} left( 4^n + 6 right) z^n + 10z + 13 } over {left( 1 - p_1 z right) left( 1 - p_2 z right)}

Put that into star office equation editor thing-e and enjoy...

Not _really_ what you asked for but...

[Lish]

I use the "Diddle" drawing program to take pictorial/equation notes. It's kludgy going back & forth between the text editor and the drawing program, but it's easier to understand what I wrote later. It's about the simplest way to enter an equation/diagram I can imagine, though. Diddle is based on "Doodle," do a search for either on palmgear or tucows.

Re:Basically, no.

[yomoma]

It's coming, from our favorite company:

MS Tablet PC.