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At the end of the last semester, I was tired of using Google Docs. It had many problems for me, some of which including:
- Math equations being a little janky
- Lists having weird indentation
- An overall lack of control over the precieseness of the document.
However, these issues I could deal with. There was a bigger annoyance that I had. In order to highlight code in pretty colors, I had to use the extention Code Blocks. For what it's worth, it worked pretty well, but it had one thing that kept annoying me. To quote the official download page:
Code Blocks does not provide real-time syntax highlighting or code formatting. To get these features, you will need to use a dedicated code editor.
This was quite annoying given how much code is typed during class.
Thus, I decided to take notes in Markdown. Although it's primary purpose is probably not for taking notes, it is a real thing that some people do so it's not that weird. However, an issue remained: if my notes are in markdown, how will I access them from my phone, and how can I share them with other people? I didn't want to have to send people files frequently so I asked ChatGPT for ways to organize markdown files. It recommended a thing called Quartz.
Quartz is a template for a website that automatically converts markdown files into a website that can easily view them all. Thankfully, services like Cloudflare allow for free domains and free hosting for websites, so that was already taken care of.
I then spent a while trying this new system out by copying my old CS 202 and CS 218 notes into markdown and playing around with Quartz's settings until I found something I liked.
Turns out, I am a picky person.
I felt like I had to keep putting bandages on almost everything in order to get it to look the way I wanted, so I did the only thing a reasonable person would do: learn how to create a website myself.
Thus, after a few tutorials (and a tad bit of ChatGPT), I got a site working. It actually wasn't too bad. Turns out there are pretty easy-to-use libraries that convert Markdown, Code, and LaTeX (used for math equations) into HTML for use in websites.
That is what you see here. It probably won't work on most devices and will probably look very scuffed sometimes because I've only tested it on my computer, but I think it's pretty neat and is a much overcomplicated solution to what should be a nonexistant problem.
If you do have any suggestions then let me know.
p.s. if you are on mobile, you need to turn your screen sideways in order to see the left sidebar to view things.