What are some useful, but little-known, features of the tools used in professional mathematics?

A few days ago, I was talking with Ed Dunne, who is currently the Executive Editor of Mathematical Reviews (and in particular with its online incarnation at MathSciNet). At the time, I was mentioning how laborious it was for me to create a BibTeX file for dozens of references by using MathSciNet to locate each reference separately, and to export each one to BibTeX format. He then informed me that underneath to every MathSciNet reference there was a little link to add the reference to a Clipboard, and then one could export the entire Clipboard at once to whatever format one wished. In retrospect, this was a functionality of the site that had always been visible, but I had never bothered to explore it, and now I can populate a BibTeX file much more quickly.

This made me realise that perhaps there are many other useful features of popular mathematical tools out there that only a few users actually know about, so I wanted to create a blog post to encourage readers to post their own favorite tools, or features of tools, that are out there, often in plain sight, but not always widely known. Here are a few that I was able to recall from my own workflow (though for some of them it took quite a while to consciously remember, since I have been so used to them for so long!):

• TeX for Gmail. A Chrome plugin that lets one write TeX symbols in emails sent through Gmail (by writing the LaTeX code and pressing a hotkey, usually F8).

• Boomerang for Gmail. Another Chrome plugin for Gmail, which does two main things. Firstly, it can “boomerang” away an email from your inbox to return at some specified later date (e.g. one week from today). I found this useful to declutter my inbox regarding mail that I needed to act on in the future, but was unable to deal with at present due to travel, or because I was waiting for some other piece of data to arrive first. Secondly, it can send out email with some specified delay (e.g. by tomorrow morning), giving one time to cancel the email if necessary. (Thanks to Julia Wolf for telling me about Boomerang!)

Which just reminds me, the Undo Send feature on Gmail has saved me from embarrassment a few times (but one has to set it up first; it delays one’s emails by a short period, such as 30 seconds, during which time it is possible to undo the email).

• LaTeX rendering in Inkscape. I used to use plain text to write mathematical formulae in my images, which always looked terrible. It took me years to realise that Inkscape had the functionality to compile LaTeX within it.

• Bookmarks in TeXnicCenter. I probably only use a tiny fraction of the functionality that TeXnicCenter offers, but one little feature I quite like is the ability to bookmark a portion of the TeX file (e.g. the bibliography at the end, or the place one is currently editing) with one hot-key (Ctrl-F2) and then one can cycle quickly between one bookmarked location and another with some further hot-keys (F2 and shift-F2).

Actually, there are a number of Windows keyboard shortcuts that are worth experimenting with (and similarly for Mac or Linux systems of course).

• Detexify has been the quickest way for me to locate the TeX code for a symbol that I couldn’t quite remember (or when hunting for a new symbol that would roughly be shaped like something I had in mind).

• For writing LaTeX on my blog, I use Luca Trevisan’s LaTeX to WordPress Python script (together with a little batch file I wrote to actually run the python script).

• Using the camera on my phone to record a blackboard computation or a slide (or the wifi password at a conference centre, or any other piece of information that is written or displayed really). If the phone is set up properly this can be far quicker than writing it down with pen and paper. (I guess this particular trick is now quite widely used, but I still see people surprised when someone else uses a phone instead of a pen to record things.)

• Using my online calendar not only to record scheduled future appointments, but also to block out time to do specific tasks (e.g. reserve 2-3pm at Tuesday to read paper X, or do errand Y). I have found I am able to get a much larger fraction of my “to do” list done on days in which I had previously blocked out such specific chunks of time, as opposed to days in which I had left several hours unscheduled (though sometimes those hours were also very useful for finding surprising new things to do that I had not anticipated). (I learned of this little trick online somewhere, but I have long since lost the original reference.)

Anyway, I would very much like to hear what other little tools or features other readers have found useful in their work.