My Nvim setup for taking LaTex notes

I am an engineering student so I don't have time to review my notes: once they are taken they are written in stone. I needed to find a way to take fast notes in LaTex. This forced to follow the majority of lectures in Polimi (even though for some courses I preferred watching them in 2x at home) and have useful notes at the end of each course. I assume you already know some LaTex, you know how to install basic LaTex packages and you don't react like this when you see a terminal. If you have never used vim or nvim I suggest you to watch this. I am 100% sure this guide works for MacOS, 90% sure it works on Linux but I don't know about Windows, so if someone manages to make it work on Windows please give me a feedback and feel free to contribute with a pull request (or just install WSL on your machine).

Preview

Prerequisites

You need to install Nvim (of course) and you can do it from here. Make sure to install the latest stable version. Once you have installed it type nvim --version in your terminal and make sure the build type is Release. You will also need a pdf readed to use the VimTex library: in this case I am using Skim but you can check out other readers on the VimTex documentation.

You need to install LaTex on your local machine. You can do this here. If you are a MacOS user I suggest you to download BasicTex instead of the full package.

Also you will need to install ripgrep from here to make Telescope work.

How to configure Nvim

• clone this repository in your local machine
• copy the nvim folder inside your .config folder
• navigate to nvim/lua/user
• type nvim plugins-setup.lua in you terminal
• type :w and wait for it to install the plugins
• type :q
• type nvim again to enter nvim

What is included

I included several packages to allow sintax highliting, snippets and navigation, plus a package to compile LaTex code. You can find the complete list in nvim/lua/user/plugins-setup.lua and add your own plugins. Each plugin has its own configuration in the folder nvim/lua/user/plugins so if you add a new plugin make sure to include it s configuration there. You will also need to include the configuration file in the nvim/init.lua file. In particular this configuration uses Skim as a pdf reader, if you want to change to another readed check out the VimTex documentation and modify the file nvim/lua/user/plugins/vimtex.lua. The line to modify is the following:

vim.g['vimtex_view_method'] = 'skim'

Snippets

The main reason why I created this configuration was to use snippets and shortcuts. In particular when you are in normal mode you can use the following:

• space + e: toggle and untoggle navigation bar
• space + ff: find files within current working directory,
• space + fs: find string under current working directory
• space + fc: find string under cursor
• space + sv: split vertically All shortcuts are listed in nvim/lua/user/core/keymaps.lua and you can add your own.

For snippets I used mostly luasnip. The folder nvim/snippets contains the snip file for every languge. I just included LaTex since is what I use this template for but you can add the file for the labguages you use. Some of the snippets are:

• itemize: creates a lust
• col3vec: creates a column vector
• img: includes an image I suggest you to look at the file to see the template specific snippets and to add your own.

How to start a new project

The template I am using is the following. To be able to use it you shoud install the following LaTex packages first:

• newpxmath.sty
• cancel.sty
• enumitem.sty
• theoremref.sty
• tcolorbox.sty
• varwidth.sty
• tikz-cd.sty
• algorithm2e.sty
• comment.sty
• import.sty
• xifthen.sty
• transparent.sty
• environ.sty
• tikzfill.image.sty
• pdfcol.sty
• listingsutf8.sty
• ifoddpage.sty
• relsize.sty
• ifmtarg.sty
• tikzsymbols.sty
• titletoc.sty
• pfg-blur.sty

If still you get compilation error look at the template.log file and see what is missing.

1. Clone the repository I listed above
2. Create a folder for your notes
3. Copy the template.tex, macros.tex, letterfonts.tex and preample.tex in your folder
4. type nvim template.tex
5. type esc to switch to normal mode
6. type :VimTexCompile to start the compiler
7. Every time you save the document (:w) It will compile it
8. (Optional) include the float package at the top of template.tex

If you got all the way here you are probably a computer scientist. The idea for this configuration came from these two blog posts:

• [https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-2/][https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-2/]
• [https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-1/][https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-1/]