📝 Scratch Paper

KaTeX powered scratch paper for live TeX-style math equations editing.

🤩 Motivation

This, at its heart, is a personal passion project for both learning and exploration purposes. Back then in one of my math lectures, I forgot to bring my math notebook to the class and I couldn't finish a class assignment because of it. Luckily, I happened to be writing a math paper in LaTeX and learning to develop macOS apps at the time, so I came up with this great idea of writing a light-weighted text-editor-like app that specifically focuses on live editing TeX-style math equations. I quickly developed a prototype so I could write math or jot down some notes and ideas when I didn't have access to a scratch paper.

This is also, to a great extent, inspired by Texpad and Notion that I used to write my math paper and take math notes.

🤔 Why use it?

I personally find it quite efficient and even grew dependent of it after some time. If you are a mathematician or learner who knows a little about writing TeX-style math equations and is in need of an eco-friendly scratch paper, "Scratch Paper" is just as light-weighted as those stapled to your notebooks.

You can use it to do so many things:

1. Take notes 📔, especially math notes with math notations ➕➖✖️➗🟰 ♾️.
2. Do math exercises: Paste your math assignments and get it done fast and with style 😎!
3. Need a quick proof or demo to someone (if you are a peer-mentor or a teacher 🧑‍🏫)? You got it!
4. Share math snippets you've written with people. 📤
5. Practice and explore writing TeX-style math equations: no more writing 3/5, x^2, S_n, or √x 🔚.
6. And so much more... Just imagine the possibilities... 💭

🧩 Features

1. Light-weighted and portable.
2. Fast and beautiful live math equation rendering with KaTeX, a powerful TeX renderer written in JavaScript.
3. Text-based and math-based rendering modes.
4. Line-to-line editing mode that supports synchronized editing.
5. Elegantly displays an outline that can be used to clearly and quickly navigate your content.
6. Shows what and where the errors are.
7. Fast and easy commands and syntax insertion.
8. Adding bookmarks for your content.
9. Customizing the renderer.
10. Import or start as simple as a text file.
11. Export rendered content to various file formats (JPEG, PNG, PDF, TIFF, Web Archive, HTML, TeX, and more is coming).
12. More features are coming...

🖍 To Dos

• A nice looking icon.
• Dark mode support for web view.
• Syntax highlighting and support for custom color schemes.
• A preference pane for app settings.
• Smart indentation.
• A web view for KaTeX documentation showing supported functions.
• A viewer for read-only mode.
• Dynamic range support for bookmarks.

🔧 How to use?

(Note: The app is at its early stage, download is provided for testing purposes.)

1. Download the latest archive from releases.
2. Decompress the archive and put the "Scratch Paper.app" file anywhere you want.
3. Double click to open the app.

Requirements

• macOS 12.0+

🔨 How to build?

If you are a developer, you can download the source code and build it using Xcode.

Requirements

• Xcode 13+ (best if it's 14 beta)
• Swift 5

Dependencies

These should be already included in the Xcode project.

• SwiftUI-Introspect (SPM)
• KaTeX (localized)
• SymbolPicker (localized)

💪 How to help?

• 📧 Contact me at my E-mail, Facebook, or Instagram if you'd like to discuss or help with this project, or even just chat with me or teach me about something.
• 🚩 Open an issue if you have questions, suggestions on improvement, or bugs you've found.
• 🍴 Or, you could simply fork the code yourself and submit a pull request to improve the app!