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Ask HN: Favorite note-taking software?

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Re: Ask HN: Favorite note-taking software?

#251

Post by rahoulb »

mamp wrote: post #153
paultopia wrote: post #64

If on the Mac ecosystem, Bear is Apple notes but with fewer sync bugs and more useful features (like a close cousin of markdown and amazing tagging). I've switched to that for notes that might stick around for a while (from Evernote and Apple notes, though I still forward emails into the former as a convenient archive). For transient notes (like shopping lists etc.) I just use drafts on iOS. Seems to work for me afte…

I'm not sure how long ago you tried Apple Notes but I've use it all the time now after trying many apps. I don't have any sync problems and it has good support for images, pen input, tables, styles etc. For anything more technical I use Quiver which supports MarkDown, code with pretty printing, LaTex and diagram markup, but it doesn't have an iPad editor (just reader).

I switched to Bear after having significant sync problems with apple notes (it was fine in iOS 10 but never ever worked properly in iOS 11). It was always OK on my Mac.

From various Apple support forum requests it seems that a lot of people were having similar - but also a number were totally unaffected.

Re: Ask HN: Favorite note-taking software?

#252

Post by yosito »

zachlatta wrote: post #53

I've given up on using any sort of branded app for notetaking. At best it's open source and the maintainers will lose interest in a few years. When you write things down, you're investing in your future. It's silly to use software that isn't making that same investment. After trying Evernote, Workflowy, Notion, wikis, org-mode, and essentially everything else I could find, I gave up and tried building my own system f…

How are you using vim on iPhone? What terminal app is that?

Re: Ask HN: Favorite note-taking software?

#253

Post by orbital-decay »

kissgyorgy wrote: post #128
Dolores12 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is wrong with org-mode? It is plain text file. I see no major differences compared to markdown.

There is a huge difference. It's proprietary , what I mean by that is you can't really edit it with anything else than Emacs. I used it with Spacemacs, and when an upgrade broke it, I left with no notes... Very frustrating experience, I immedieately abandoned it when it happened. Never used org-mode since then.

Org-mode itself is an Emacs addon, so it's not surprising that you cannot run it without Emacs. Emacs and org-mode are much more stable and much less likely to die than any other software, and that's precisely why I'm using them for a decade already.

The org-mode file format is plaintext, just like Markdown, and you definitely can edit and view it with any text editor. You will obviously lose the convenience of org-mode, though. Additionally, it's simple enough that you can easily implement a parser/importer for any other software.

Re: Ask HN: Favorite note-taking software?

#254

Post by Timothycquinn »

I find a single pane outliner the best for me. You can nest, group and move ideas around quickly. For windows, the best still is Ecco Pro. It's a free software written back in the 90's that has an awesome outliner. I know there are many other windows based single pane outlines but I have not used windows for my desktop for several years.

On Linux, which is my primary desktop, I use Ecco Pro on Wine.

If using OSX / IOS, I would recommend Omni Outliner.

Regarding two pane outliners vs singleness pane, I simply don't find the fragmentation of information across two panes intuitive. This may be subjective though. To me, having all information in a single tree, flows much better when brainstorming.

For Android, I don't have many good options for Outlining and therefore a regular note taker for now that's Evernote.

Re: Ask HN: Favorite note-taking software?

#255

Post by orbital-decay »

Walkman wrote: post #213
xfer wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that sense markdown is also proprietary, since you need some editor making things easy for you to manipulate and navigate the text document(that's all emacs does; even github renders org docs).

The big difference is that Markdown is way simpler, you can read it reasonably easy with Notepad even, and this is why every reasonable editor can Render it preview it, export it. Even browsers or small apps can show a HTML rendered markdown. There are even standalone Markdown editors, but there is no standalone org-mode editor.

An org-mode subset comparable to Markdown isn't more complex than Markdown itself.

Re: Ask HN: Favorite note-taking software?

#257

Post by vfc1 »

Evernote works awesome, worth every penny. I use the checkbox lists fot todos, share notes with contractors with task instructions easily, the notes can have embedded images and files. I access it on phone, tablet and desktop works perfectly, i highly recommend it.

Edit: forgot to mention it includes a buil-in chat that i use all the time with contractors

Re: Ask HN: Favorite note-taking software?

#259

Post by philip1209 »

vfc1 wrote: post #257

Evernote works awesome, worth every penny. I use the checkbox lists fot todos, share notes with contractors with task instructions easily, the notes can have embedded images and files. I access it on phone, tablet and desktop works perfectly, i highly recommend it. Edit: forgot to mention it includes a buil-in chat that i use all the time with contractors

The main reason that I stopped using it was that it didn't support code well.

Re: Ask HN: Favorite note-taking software?

#260

Post by arikrak »

Simplenote is decent for just quick note taking on a phone or computer browser with a sync that usually works.

Onenote is good if you like organizing your notes hierarchically into notebooks, tabs, etc. They have apps for the different OS's.

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