A LaTeX-based research diary system for creating, organizing, and compiling daily latex notes into both PDF documents and HTML blogs, with a minimal tag system for easy organization. Note: The LaTeX-to-HTML blog conversion is functional but still under refinement.

# Make the script executable (first time only)
chmod +x diary

# Create today's diary entry. 
./diary today
# This would create a latex diary posts/year/year-month-day.tex. You can start typing.  

# If you create more than one diary in the same day, you can create entry with an extra name, such as 
./diary today machine-learning
# this would create posts/year/year-month-day-[optionalname].tex. 

# View system status
./diary status

# Compile all entries from current year into a single pdf with table of content. 
./diary 2025

# Compile entries with specific tags 
./diary tags AI machine-learning

# Create a blog with all files with including the union of a number of tags. 
./diary blog AI machine-learning 

or 
./diary blog 2025 # creating a blog with all posts in 2025 

diary/
├── diary                 # Main executable script
├── config.yaml           # User-friendly configuration
├── posts/                # All diary entries
│   └── 2025/             # Organized by year
│       ├── 2025-01-15-research-methods.tex
│       ├── 2025-01-16-neural-networks.tex
│       └── ...
├── collections/          # Compiled outputs (combined documents)
│   ├── year-2025/        # Yearly compilations
│   ├── ai+ml/            # Tag-based collections
│   └── ...
├── blogs/                # Individual post blogs ✨ NEW!
│   ├── ai+ml/            # Blog for AI+ML topics
│   │   ├── index.html    # Blog homepage
│   │   ├── style.css     # Blog styling
│   │   └── posts/        # Individual HTML posts
│   └── ...
└── assets/               # Templates, styles, and resources
    ├── templates/        # LaTeX templates
    ├── styles/           # LaTeX style files
    ├── html_templates/   # HTML blog templates
    ├── bib/              # Bibliography files
    └── figures/          # Research figures and images

# Create today's entry
./diary today

# Create entry with optional name (no quotes needed!)
./diary today optimization-methods
./diary today literature-review
./diary today experiment-results

What happens:

• Creates posts/YEAR/YYYY-MM-DD-[name].tex
• Automatically includes current year as tag
• Opens with template ready for editing

# Basic status
./diary status

# Verbose output (shows debug info)
./diary --verbose status

Shows:

• Number of entries for current year
• Available tags and their frequencies
• System configuration
• Directory locations

# Compile current year (super simple!)
./diary 2025

# Compile other years
./diary 2024
./diary 2023

# Traditional way (still works)
./diary compile --year 2025

# Compile to HTML instead of PDF
./diary compile --year 2025 --format html

# Custom output location
./diary compile --year 2025 --output my-research-2025

Output:

• PDF: collections/year-YYYY/YYYY-Research-Diary.pdf
• HTML: collections/year-YYYY/YYYY-Research-Diary.html

# Single tag (no quotes needed!)
./diary tags machine-learning

# Multiple tags (finds entries with ANY of these tags)
./diary tags AI neural-networks deep-learning

# Tags with spaces still need quotes
./diary tags "natural language processing" "computer vision"

# Mixed - simple tags without quotes, spaced tags with quotes
./diary tags AI "machine learning" deep-learning

# Compile to HTML instead of PDF
./diary tags AI deep-learning --format html

# Custom output location
./diary tags AI ML --output my-ai-collection

Output:

• PDF: collections/tag1+tag2+tag3/tag1+tag2+tag3.pdf
• HTML: collections/tag1+tag2+tag3/tag1+tag2+tag3.html

# Create a blog with individual HTML posts
./diary blog AI machine-learning

# Create blog for specific research topics
./diary blog "deep learning" transformers

# Multiple topics with full LaTeX support
./diary blog research-methods statistics analysis

# Compact table-of-contents style (default)
./diary blog 2025

# Full card layout with excerpts
./diary blog 2025 --full

What happens:

• Creates blogs/tag1+tag2/ directory with minimalist grey design
• Generates individual HTML files with full LaTeX command support
• All 100+ custom LaTeX commands work perfectly (\argmax, \KL, \E, etc.)
• Creates beautiful responsive index.html with post previews
• Includes professional CSS styling optimized for academic content
• Automatic MathJax integration for mathematical notation

Output Structure:

blogs/tag1+tag2/
├── index.html          # Main blog page with post list
├── style.css           # Blog styling
└── posts/              # Individual post HTML files
    ├── 2025-01-15-entry1.html
    ├── 2025-01-16-entry2.html
    ├── post.css         # Post styling
    └── ...

Edit the tag line in your .tex files:

% <TAGs>: 2025, machine learning, neural networks, research methods

Tag Rules:

• Comma-separated: Use commas to separate multiple tags
• Spaces allowed: "neural networks", "machine learning", "research methods"
• Case insensitive: "AI" matches "ai" matches "Ai"
• Auto year: Current year automatically added
• Custom tags: Add any topics relevant to your research

% <TAGs>: 2025, deep learning, transformers, attention mechanisms
% <TAGs>: 2025, experiment results, statistical analysis
% <TAGs>: 2025, literature review, survey paper, related work
% <TAGs>: 2025, meeting notes, advisor discussion
% <TAGs>: 2025, conference paper, submission deadline

Edit config.yaml to customize your setup:

author: "Your Name"
institution: "Your University"
current_year: "auto"
default_editor: "code"

Key Settings:

• auto for year = automatically use current year
• Editor options: code (VS Code), open (macOS default), vim, etc.

Each entry supports full LaTeX formatting:

\section{Research Progress}

Today I worked on \textbf{attention mechanisms} in transformers.

\subsection{Key Findings}
\begin{itemize}
    \item Multi-head attention improves performance
    \item Positional encoding is crucial: $PE_{pos,2i} = \sin(pos/10000^{2i/d})$
    \item Self-attention complexity is $O(n^2)$
\end{itemize}

\subsection{Next Steps}
\begin{enumerate}
    \item Implement efficient attention
    \item Run experiments on dataset
    \item Compare with baseline models
\end{enumerate}

# Daily research workflow (no quotes needed!)
./diary today monday-research
./diary today tuesday-experiments  
./diary today wednesday-analysis

# Project-based entries
./diary today project-alpha-week3
./diary today paper-submission-final

# Meeting notes
./diary today advisor-meeting
./diary today group-discussion

# Compile monthly progress
./diary tags project-alpha --output monthly-alpha-progress

# Compile all meetings
./diary tags meeting discussion --output all-meetings

# Year-end compilation (super simple!)
./diary 2024

# Find entries about any ML topic (mix of simple and spaced tags)
./diary tags "machine learning" "deep learning" neural-networks AI

# Research methodology entries
./diary tags experiment analysis methodology statistics

# Paper writing entries  
./diary tags writing paper submission review

• Python 3.6+ (usually pre-installed)

• LaTeX (for PDF compilation):
  • macOS: brew install --cask mactex
  • Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install texlive-full
  • Windows: Install MiKTeX or TeX Live

• Pandoc (for HTML compilation):
  • macOS: brew install pandoc
  • Ubuntu: sudo apt install pandoc
  • Windows: Download from pandoc.org
• Internet connection (for MathJax CDN)

• 📚 Bibliography Support - Automatic citation processing with --citeproc
• 🎨 Minimalist Design - Clean grey aesthetic optimized for academic content
• 🧮 Advanced Math Support - 100+ LaTeX commands work seamlessly in HTML
• ⚡ Perfect LaTeX Integration - \argmax, \KL, \E, \dd, \blue{}, \vv{} all supported
• 📱 Responsive Design - Works beautifully on mobile and desktop
• 🔍 Searchable - Full-text search with Ctrl+F
• 🎯 Chronological Sorting - Entries sorted by creation time, not filename
• 📐 Professional Typography - Times New Roman, proper margins, justified text

"pdflatex not found"

# Install LaTeX distribution
brew install --cask mactex  # macOS
sudo apt install texlive-full  # Ubuntu

"pandoc not found" (for HTML compilation)

# Install pandoc
brew install pandoc  # macOS
sudo apt install pandoc  # Ubuntu

"No diary entries found"

• Check you're in the right directory
• Ensure entries have proper <TAGs>: format
• Use ./diary status to see available entries

HTML compilation issues

• Ensure internet connection for MathJax and Bootstrap CSS
• Try running pandoc manually: pandoc file.tex -o file.html --standalone --mathjax

Template not found

• Ensure latex/templates/ directory exists
• Check file permissions

# Show all available commands
./diary --help

# Show help for specific command
./diary today --help
./diary compile --help
./diary tags --help

1. Consistent naming: Use descriptive entry names
2. Tag everything: Add relevant tags to all entries
3. Regular compilation: Weekly/monthly progress reviews
4. Backup: Keep your posts/ directory backed up

• Broad categories: "research", "meetings", "writing"
• Specific topics: "transformer", "CNN", "optimization"
• Project names: "project-alpha", "paper-submission"
• Time periods: "week1", "month3", "semester1"

• Daily: Individual entry review
• Weekly: ./diary tags "week1" "week2"
• Monthly: ./diary compile --year 2025
• Project: ./diary tags "project-name"
• Topic: ./diary tags "specific-research-area"

Happy researching! 📚✨

For questions or issues, check the troubleshooting section or examine the simple diary script source code.