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Show HN: An open source alternative to Evernote (Self Hosted)

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Re: Show HN: An open source alternative to Evernote (Self Hosted)

#31
The name needs to change.

This tool commits the cardinal sin of choosing a name GitSomething, where Git is only incidental to the domain that the product is concerned with (notetaking) and which is made worse by being yet another project that says "Git" where what it means is "we're using the GitHub API".

> You may not use the Marks in the following ways:

...

> In any way that indicates that Git favors one distribution, platform, product, etc. over another except where explicitly indicated in writing by Conservancy.

...

> In addition, you may not use any of the Marks as a syllable in a new word or as part of a portmanteau (e.g., "Gitalicious", "Gitpedia") used as a mark for a third-party product or service without Conservancy's written permission. For the avoidance of doubt, this provision applies even to third-party marks that use the Marks as a syllable or as part of a portmanteau to refer to a product or service's use of Git code.

http://git-scm.com/about/trademark

> Let's say as an example that it does backups. We'd prefer it not call itself GitBackups. We don't endorse it, and it's just using the name to imply association that isn't there. You can come up with similar hypotheticals: GitMail that stores mailing list archives in Git, or GitWiki that uses Git as a backing store.

https://public-inbox.org/git/20170202022655.2jwvudhvo4hmueaw...

What's also notable is that it conflicts with what is permitted: 'Commands like "git-foo" (so you run it as "git foo") are generally OK. This is Git's well-known extension mechanism[...]' When "git-foo" exists, we've approved "Git Foo" as a matching project name'. This combined with the fact that Git itself already ships with the "git-notes" command baked right in...

Re: Show HN: An open source alternative to Evernote (Self Hosted)

#32

Thanks for sharing, but almost all "alternatives to Evernote" lack some of the most important (to me) features like web clipping, OCR and related notes. The only real alternative to Evernote I've found is DEVONthink.

For me, the missing feature is usually adding a note on my computer and accessing it seconds later on my phone. There are a lot of notes that would be tedious to create on my phone because of their complexity, but which I use on the go. Examples are workout plans, shopping notes, and travel notes. With Evernote, I create the note on my computer, walk out the door, and already have access on my phone.

Re: Show HN: An open source alternative to Evernote (Self Hosted)

#33
post #18

Thanks for sharing, but almost all "alternatives to Evernote" lack some of the most important (to me) features like web clipping, OCR and related notes. The only real alternative to Evernote I've found is DEVONthink.

Not exactly open source, but as far as "alternatives to Evernote" goes, I've been told about Obsidian[0] (though I've not jumped in yet), which has plugins for OCR and web clipping, and considering the community, I'd be surprised if related notes aren't a thing. [0] https://obsidian.md/

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: An open source alternative to Evernote (Self Hosted)

#34
I love how more and more of us are using Git to store our notes, though in this case it's more coupled to GitHub than Git. If there is already a need to self-host this, then why not just hook into git and make this more generic?

In fact, why is a Postgres database even needed?

Please note that I'm biased. I work on [GitJournal](https://gitjournal.io) which is similar, but only mobile based.

Re: Show HN: An open source alternative to Evernote (Self Hosted)

#35

Thanks for sharing, but almost all "alternatives to Evernote" lack some of the most important (to me) features like web clipping, OCR and related notes. The only real alternative to Evernote I've found is DEVONthink.

The most important feature of Evernote for me is saving attachments locally so they can be modified on the client machine and then automatically synced. Most alternatives can only allow you to download the attachment and then reupload the attachment manually.

Re: Show HN: An open source alternative to Evernote (Self Hosted)

#36
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These days I tend to rely on archive.org (+ archive.today) and a plain link rather than web clipping tools. I just find it more useful coming back later to have access to the full fidelity of a page and its context. It also feels appropriate to be publicly preserving parts of the web that you've found useful enough to note down. As someone at archive.org said, 'If you see something, save something.' Edit: n.b. archiv…

Interesting. But how do you keep track of archive links that are relevant to you?

I think they meant that instead of saving links to articles directly, they will save references to archive.org links. This is a protection against the host taking down the article for whatever reason.

Re: Show HN: An open source alternative to Evernote (Self Hosted)

#37
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah I agree. This is really the knowledge management tool

When I presented Obsidian to a friend, and he told me that it was just a note-taking app, I was quite shocked by [what I consider to be] such a lack of consideration. Because I really use Obsidian as my second memory [marketing definitely worked on me, it seems :)]. Anyway... I have never used EverNote (==note taking?). And, as you have read, I am reaaaaally in Obsidian (==knowledge management?). Can any of you elabo…

Evernote positioned itself as a "second brain", but turned out to become an awesome Digital Vault. You can throw anything at it and Evernote will happily ingest it. You have blazingly fast search backed by Evernote cloud services, and even have some note linking capabilities but they are rudimentary when compared to a fully fledged PKM like Obsidian, DEVONthink, or others. These newer PKM tools allow you to reflect and reason on the content you have and massage it in ways that surface new ideas and allow you to follow unexpected relationships (hence being a true second brain). This is much more harder to achieve with Evernote.

Both are valid and powerful tools but the use cases are different, maybe just because the definition of "second brain" has moved since Evernote was conceptualized on the 2000s.

Re: Show HN: An open source alternative to Evernote (Self Hosted)

#38
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These days I tend to rely on archive.org (+ archive.today) and a plain link rather than web clipping tools. I just find it more useful coming back later to have access to the full fidelity of a page and its context. It also feels appropriate to be publicly preserving parts of the web that you've found useful enough to note down. As someone at archive.org said, 'If you see something, save something.' Edit: n.b. archiv…

Interesting. But how do you keep track of archive links that are relevant to you?

Hmm? I meant, instead of taking a web clipping or screenshot, I keep only a link to the page in question (and submit it to the archive if it wasn't already crawled). Though I'm still not happy with how I track what part of a page is most relevant--usually it ends up being an ad hoc mix of quoting and outlining. Related: Wasn't there an HN post about highlighting being considered harmful?

I'm also undecided still on whether to always record the original URL or the archive URL when the original page is unlikely to change. Archive links contain the entire original URL, so there's no risk there; on the other hand, it tends to be clear from the date of the note which snapshot to retrieve, so there's not really a need. But dates are close to being metadata and might be lost somehow...

Re: Show HN: An open source alternative to Evernote (Self Hosted)

#39

Thanks for sharing, but almost all "alternatives to Evernote" lack some of the most important (to me) features like web clipping, OCR and related notes. The only real alternative to Evernote I've found is DEVONthink.

Joplin has a web clipper addon at least

https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/blob/dev/readme/clipper....

There's also an offline OCR plugin based on Tesseract

https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/plugin-offline-ocr-extract...

Re: Show HN: An open source alternative to Evernote (Self Hosted)

#40
post #19

Thanks for sharing, but almost all "alternatives to Evernote" lack some of the most important (to me) features like web clipping, OCR and related notes. The only real alternative to Evernote I've found is DEVONthink.

These days I tend to rely on archive.org (+ archive.today) and a plain link rather than web clipping tools. I just find it more useful coming back later to have access to the full fidelity of a page and its context. It also feels appropriate to be publicly preserving parts of the web that you've found useful enough to note down. As someone at archive.org said, 'If you see something, save something.' Edit: n.b. archiv…

I personally save them using the SingleFile browser extension.

https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFile

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