Manage Handwritten Content (in particular Math & Physics notes)

[gianpaolosantarsiero]

Hi,

I’m a final-year bachelor’s student in Physics, and I’ve been using Obsidian for note-taking for the past two years. I still haven’t figured out how to best manage handwritten content inside Obsidian, and I’d like to know how others handle this — especially in the mathematics and physics community (and for inclusivity, I’ll also consider engineers this time /s).

What I do

My note-taking philosophy is simple: all Markdown, no plugins that add non-standard syntax to notes.

I’ve learned to take lecture notes directly in Obsidian (shout-out to the LaTeX Suite plugin by artisticat1), so writing text and equations is no longer an issue.
What I still struggle with is managing attachments, in particular:

Pictures of the blackboard

Handwritten content like diagrams, sketches, plots…

For pictures, the ideal would be a core plugin for quick capture (similar to the voice recordings feature), so that might be outside my control.
For handwritten content, I haven’t yet found a solution that fits my needs: it should be portable (not device-specific), have good stylus support, and avoid cluttering the vault with unnecessary files (only the .png, .jpeg, or .svg that are actually displayed in the note).

I tried Excalidraw briefly, but I didn’t like it because pen support on my Android device (Galaxy Tab S8) wasn’t as good as in standalone apps like Samsung Notes. Also, while there’s an option to embed .png or .svg files in the note instead of .excalidraw files, the sync between the displayed image and the source file didn’t seem flawless.

Suggestions

If you have a solution to my problem, I’d be grateful if you could share it with me and the rest of the community. Please also explain the pros and cons of your solution — that helps a lot.

Thanks.

[digitaldoctors]

Can you clarify your goal or the problem, or what you are doing currently ? What are the parameters of success or failure ? What are you doing that you don’t like ?

pictures of blackboard.
I’d insert as a .png

Handwritten content
I’d insert as a .pdf

I’ve always wanted a good standalone inking file format. The earlier versions of Microsoft Journal did exactly that. (.jnt files) but M$ essentially got rid of it.

[gianpaolosantarsiero]

Hi, thanks for the feedback.

In my opinion, dealing with attachments (especially quick handwritten notes) can be tricky. I would like to know how other people handle this. For example, with blackboard notes, you can take a picture with your smartphone and share it with your computer, but I’m on Linux + Android, so I don’t know any solution that works as flawlessly as Airdrop. Or maybe you’ve managed to build a workflow like Gilles Castel, but in Obsidian. Or perhaps you’re ok with Excalidraw, so it would be great if you can share your workflow and preferences (.png vs .svg. vs .excalidraw. embedded in the document or other settings you think are better).

I hope I’ve answered your questions, but if you feel my problem is still ill-defined, please let me know.