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Dropbox Paper

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61–70 of 214 posts

Re: Dropbox Paper

#61
I used this quite a lot over the past 6 months, for personal note taking (didn't use any of the team/collaboration features or whatever)

It's pretty nice, supports inline LaTeX, embedding youtube, spotify, images, tweets, PDFs, google docs and has a good markdown parser.

I've recently moved over to org-mode though, mainly because there are more features (although it doesn't support the rich media things like embedded videos etc, but has good enough solutions for images and LaYeX)

Re: Dropbox Paper

#62
post #41
post #30

Another closed file format. I think we're are in need of a lightweight document format, which is more complex than markdown, but needn't be as complex as docx. A quick google shows some results which look like pet projects of small business which have obviously failed (since I've never heard of them before) All of these new document formats that are pushed by big companies (some are really great I actually love using…

I've been playing with passing markdown+css file+image tree to: pandoc {options} -H file.css --self-contained. It base64 encodes the images directly into the HTML5. The css in file.css is wrapped in and is inlined in the header. The result is a fat HTML file with all the basic bits to make an article included. Exact line: pandoc --standalone --toc -V "toctitle:'Title'" --self-contained --to html5 -H article.css -o fi…

Thanks for the reply. I could really see making great looking documents with this. Although the problem is we're using all these cli tools (I love them too) to edit them.

So the problem is when I try to edit them on a new computer or even online, there's no way for me to do it in most cases, and in when I actually can install packages for all that, there's some dependency management I have to do. One more thing, since the output in HTML file, I have to again use a full-featured(which means slow to open) web browser to render the HTML file.

Re: Dropbox Paper

#63
post #51

I'll throw Notion ( https://notion.so/ ) into the mix here, as an (as far as I can tell far more full-featured) alternative to this. I've used Paper a number of times, starting from long before Notion was a thing, having been a happy Etherpad and Hackpad user in the past. Somehow Paper managed to inspire less in my collaborators than either the latter services (where perhaps plain text was the factor) or than Notion…

I've looked at Notion a few times, and it looks really impressive. It also looks really overwhelming – almost too many features/capabilities, so it's hard to know how it would fit into what I currently do, or what tools I should replace with it.

But maybe that means I'm not the right customer for it :)

Re: Dropbox Paper

#64
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been playing with passing markdown+css file+image tree to: pandoc {options} -H file.css --self-contained. It base64 encodes the images directly into the HTML5. The css in file.css is wrapped in and is inlined in the header. The result is a fat HTML file with all the basic bits to make an article included. Exact line: pandoc --standalone --toc -V "toctitle:'Title'" --self-contained --to html5 -H article.css -o fi…

For the longest time (5 or 6 years, way longer than Electron) I have been puzzled as to why there didn't exist a document format for offline websites/apps, that are basically a zip file of HTML+CSS+images+javascript. That way you could build simple, easily distributable multimedia documents and web apps.

This is close, but I'm thinking cut out the web tools part. Do we really have to depend on HTML and CSS (or other XML based format which needs a web browser to view) to make and edit a simple word document? I cringe thinking of the bloat that is introduced when using CSS and javascript to view text+pictures.

Re: Dropbox Paper

#65
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been playing with passing markdown+css file+image tree to: pandoc {options} -H file.css --self-contained. It base64 encodes the images directly into the HTML5. The css in file.css is wrapped in and is inlined in the header. The result is a fat HTML file with all the basic bits to make an article included. Exact line: pandoc --standalone --toc -V "toctitle:'Title'" --self-contained --to html5 -H article.css -o fi…

For the longest time (5 or 6 years, way longer than Electron) I have been puzzled as to why there didn't exist a document format for offline websites/apps, that are basically a zip file of HTML+CSS+images+javascript. That way you could build simple, easily distributable multimedia documents and web apps.

The pandoc help section on "--self-contained" indicates that it can mostly handle your use case (minus the compression step).

Re: Dropbox Paper

#66
post #51

I'll throw Notion ( https://notion.so/ ) into the mix here, as an (as far as I can tell far more full-featured) alternative to this. I've used Paper a number of times, starting from long before Notion was a thing, having been a happy Etherpad and Hackpad user in the past. Somehow Paper managed to inspire less in my collaborators than either the latter services (where perhaps plain text was the factor) or than Notion…

Looking at the landing page, I have built some hypothetical mental model on how to use the app and its feature, but it's mostly guessing - it would be awesome if they put up a video showcasing real-world usage and features.

"Task Board, Design Specs, Knowledge Base, Coding Docs, Team Handbook, Roadmap" - are these possible use-cases of the system? Or are they disparate document types? You create a document and pick one of these types which determines its features and layout?

"lets you nest pages inside each other" - does this mean hyperlinking?

"No more markup" - so WYSIWYG, just like Google Docs, Quip, MS Office, etc?

"Love using Trello" - I don't know what Trello is.

There's Slack notifications, but can you @tag people?

Re: Dropbox Paper

#67
post #57

Initially when Paper was launched I tried and left the product quickly. I was using Quip a lot for my work as it's more developer friendly and easy to manage. I use Paper more and more these days with my team though we are into Google for Work. Google Docs is a tough cookie and an office replica. Those who are in to markdown, they would hardly go back to anything else for formatting. The only catch with markdown is a…

Ditto, I was lucky enough to try out the beta a year ago, and since then, I've been using it more and more compared to Docs or even text files (for event planning, side projects, server docs, etc).

The markdown integration, especially for inlining code, is awesome and what Docs should have been. Being able to quickly make a checklist has also change my note taking behavior and I almost never use straight up text files or specific list apps anymore.

That said, they recently changed their UI to hide the starred docs from the side bar which really makes them harder to find, and I actually find the inline dropbox file links/tables fidgety. But all in all, it's pretty awesome at reducing the friction between mind to note.

Re: Dropbox Paper

#68
post #62
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been playing with passing markdown+css file+image tree to: pandoc {options} -H file.css --self-contained. It base64 encodes the images directly into the HTML5. The css in file.css is wrapped in and is inlined in the header. The result is a fat HTML file with all the basic bits to make an article included. Exact line: pandoc --standalone --toc -V "toctitle:'Title'" --self-contained --to html5 -H article.css -o fi…

Thanks for the reply. I could really see making great looking documents with this. Although the problem is we're using all these cli tools (I love them too) to edit them. So the problem is when I try to edit them on a new computer or even online, there's no way for me to do it in most cases, and in when I actually can install packages for all that, there's some dependency management I have to do. One more thing, sinc…

I hear you on needing piles of CLI packages. Regarding the web browser, the pandoc HTML seems pretty basic, so even the lightweight GUI browsers will probably handle it correctly. Also, if you include the correct bits in each image link in the markdown, I believe the resulting HTML5 will render with your included image descriptions in a text-only browser.

Re: Dropbox Paper

#69
post #51

I'll throw Notion ( https://notion.so/ ) into the mix here, as an (as far as I can tell far more full-featured) alternative to this. I've used Paper a number of times, starting from long before Notion was a thing, having been a happy Etherpad and Hackpad user in the past. Somehow Paper managed to inspire less in my collaborators than either the latter services (where perhaps plain text was the factor) or than Notion…

Notion looks really good, I am going to give it a go. What I like especially is that for a small 3 person team, just starting, it's price friendly. This in contrary to many other similar apps.

Re: Dropbox Paper

#70
After looking this over again, it kind of seems like a blogging platform. I'm going to DL it later, but looks like it could be a sneaky way for them to enter the content publishing space.
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