| name | fill-in-notes |
| description | Turn a textbook chapter, lecture, or paper into beautiful "fill-in" study notes — written to be READ (clean statements, intuition) yet engineered to be FILLED (blanks, proof skeletons, "your turn" computations) so the reader learns by active recall. Notes are typeset with the Loom XeLaTeX class in this repo. Use when the user wants study notes from a source with gaps to fill in, worked examples restaged as exercises, or theorems stated but proofs left open. Triggers: "make fill-in notes", "turn this chapter into notes I can fill in", "guided / skeleton study notes", "study notes from this book/PDF", "读+填 笔记", "被动+主动 learning notes". NOT for a plain summary, a polished paper, or notes with every detail spelled out (that kills the active layer). |
Fill-in notes — the Loom method
Produce study notes that a learner both reads (passive intake) and fills
(active recall). The source is the answer key; the notes are the scaffold. Lead with
a spine (one organizing idea) so a chapter becomes a single story, not a transcript.
Pipeline
- Read the source; find the spine. Skim the chapter/PDF, then name the ONE
organizing idea and reorganize around it — a dictionary, an engine list, a single
theorem the rest orbits. Do not transcribe section by section if a better shape
exists. (Concentration → "8 engines"; Nonlinear Algebra → the algebra↔geometry
dictionary.)
- Scaffold. Copy
template/ (it brings loom.cls + a starter main.tex).
Put the master spine on the front page (a cheat-table / map, partly blank), then
\input one file per section under sections/.
- Draft each section in the Loom grammar (see the table below).
- Engineer the gaps (~70% read / 30% fill). Read
reference/method.md. Blank the
high-value thinking moves, never so much that reading breaks.
- Compile + verify.
latexmk -xelatex main (or xelatex twice). Fix the known
reference/pitfalls.md traps. Rasterize a page (ghostscript) and read it back to
check the look before declaring done.
The Loom grammar — what goes where
| beat | device | role |
|---|
| one-line thesis | strand env | the big idea, read-only |
| when to use it | \trigger{…} | a cue line |
| sub-heading | \block{…} | quiet section lead |
| quick-reference | tabularx w/ L column | the cheat-sheet / dictionary |
| definition | definition env (madder knot) | state it, blank a key clause with \fillin |
| result | theorem/lemma/prop/cor (indigo knot) | state in full (read) |
| proof | proof + \TODO{step} | skeleton; the learner fills the step |
| worked instance | example (weld knot) | setup given |
| do-it-yourself | yourturn env + \workspace[n] | the active zone; the example, restaged |
| grok meter | \warmth{0..5} | self-assessment per section |
| margin recall | \recall{question} | a parked active-recall prompt |
| open thread | \loose{…} | an exercise to pull next time |
| cross-ref thread | \warp{key} / \pick{key} | declare and reuse a recurring object |
Full command reference: reference/loom-commands.md.
Honest scoping
- The notes restate results from the source. For personal study this is fine; before
making notes that closely track a copyrighted book public, attribute clearly and
consider an original example instead (see the repo README's note).
- Keep the source's numbering in the knot title (e.g.
Theorem 4.1 (… Thm. 2.16)); the
bold auto-numbers are local to the notes.
See also
../template/main.tex — blank starter (a live cheat-sheet of every device).../examples/nonlinear-algebra/ — full fill-in treatment (\fillin, yourturn).../examples/concentration-of-measure/ — proof-skeleton style (\TODO).../examples/demo/ — every visual feature on two pages.
