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Ask HN: Favorite note-taking software?

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Re: Ask HN: Favorite note-taking software?

#311

Post by marchenko »

jopsen wrote: post #210
skorbenko wrote: post #163

I’ve given up on absolutely everything; As of now, I just keep .txt files in my Dropbox, accessed via any app on the market.

Me too, but I'm still missing a good markdown editor on Android, since Draft went out of action.. It would also be nice with a good editor that was somewhat Dropbox aware, so I had fewer edit conflicts between my laptop and phone..

I use Jotterpad on Android to edit markdown and text files. It syncs well with Dropbox (it feels just like a frontend for a dropbox folder) and supports .txt, .md, .markdown, and .fountain files.

I use Brackets and Typora to edit .md files on pc/mac/linux. I find image handling in .md files fairly simple as long as you maintain an appropriate folder structure on the backend. Typora makes this especially easy.

I would like to build a better self-hosted tagging/viewing program for my huge cache of notes - something like Google Keep without being, well, Google. Turtl comes closest to my needs, but the lack of import/export at this point is a problem. I do not wish to be tied to a particular format or storage space.

Re: Ask HN: Favorite note-taking software?

#312

Post by akirak »

Spivak wrote: post #299
falcolas wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> afraid That's quite the value judgement. Emacs, when compared with Atom and Sublime Text, has a tremendous learning curve for little payback. It's extensible? So are they, and with programming languages that are useful outside the editor, no less. It's powerful? So are they. And more, they implement something resembling a common UI to the rest of the applications on your system. Sure, you can emulate that with the…

You're ignoring distributions of Emacs which are designed to solve this problem by bundling and pre-configuring everything. Spacemacs, Prelude, and Scimacs are all good options depending on your use-case. I mean if all you want is a text editor, some SCM integration, some build tool integration, syntax highlighting, and code completion then going with a specialized tool just for that is a good choice. But the power o…

> Organize your tasks and projects with org-mode and work seemelessly with your team by syncing with org-trello.

I disagree to this point. org-trello should work in that way "in theory", but actually it doesn't. Its usage is quite opinionated, and its syncing didn't work as I expected when I tried it out. Instead, we probably should have an org-mode integration with GitHub/GitLab issues.

Re: Ask HN: Favorite note-taking software?

#313

Post by prh8 »

martin_ wrote: post #310
mamp wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

My biggest gripe with Apple Notes is if I throw some snippet of code in there it mutates the quotes to "smart quotes" and thus the code produces syntax errors if I try and use it again :(

Btw you can disable smart quotes system wide on macOS, it's in keyboard settings.

Re: Ask HN: Favorite note-taking software?

#314

Post by prh8 »

cpach wrote: post #217
m3tr0s wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are using Apple devices, consider switching to Bear, it is $15 annually. Tagging is the main organizing method in the app, also much faster then Evernote.

Thank you for the recommendation. Does Bear have a web version? For me, that’s one of Evernote’s killer features. It’s very convenient not having to install Evernote on my Windows computer at work.

They don't, since they use iCloud for data storage (so they do get privacy points!) That's why it's Apple only. I know they are working on some stuff for web/Android, but I have no idea how it will work. Maybe users will either be Apple hosted or Bear hosted.

Re: Ask HN: Favorite note-taking software?

#315

Post by rthomas6 »

Spivak wrote: post #299
falcolas wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> afraid That's quite the value judgement. Emacs, when compared with Atom and Sublime Text, has a tremendous learning curve for little payback. It's extensible? So are they, and with programming languages that are useful outside the editor, no less. It's powerful? So are they. And more, they implement something resembling a common UI to the rest of the applications on your system. Sure, you can emulate that with the…

You're ignoring distributions of Emacs which are designed to solve this problem by bundling and pre-configuring everything. Spacemacs, Prelude, and Scimacs are all good options depending on your use-case. I mean if all you want is a text editor, some SCM integration, some build tool integration, syntax highlighting, and code completion then going with a specialized tool just for that is a good choice. But the power o…

But how hard is it to learn, and remember, how to do all these things?

Re: Ask HN: Favorite note-taking software?

#316

Post by wool_gather »

JesseAldridge wrote: post #112
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…

I had the same sort of idea. I built this when Notational Velocity broke when upgrading to the latest macOS: https://github.com/JesseAldridge/toothbrush It's a single python file for grepping a directory of text files as I type. I have a global keyboard shortcut cmd+J that gives focus to my terminal and I then launch the script by running `t`. Then I can just start typing to search a career's worth of notes. Would be…

Notational Velocity broke? Any details? I'm continuing to use it happily on High Sierra.

Re: Ask HN: Favorite note-taking software?

#317

Post by awake »

phirschybar wrote: post #279
craftyguy wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively, you can use something which saves in a format that would be trivial to make a replacement for reading/writing it. One example is jrnl[1]. Each journal (collection of entries) is written in a flat text file. You can optionally encrypt it with AES. They even give you reference code on how you could decrypt it yourself[2]. If jrnl stops being a thing, I can probably re-implement all of its functionality i…

I used jrnl.sh for about a year. I was able to extend it to parse the output so I could do some analysis on what I had written (I was using it partially to track time spent on certain tasks). However, I came to find that write long-form on the command line is just awkward. Lately I have been using checkvist.com which has been working out great.

In case you hadn't seen this jrnl has a config option for setting the default editor. http://jrnl.sh/recipes.html#external-editors

Re: Ask HN: Favorite note-taking software?

#318

Post by wool_gather »

haasted wrote: post #290

I’m currently working on adopting The Archive ( https://www.cultofmac.com/535825/the-archive-is-the-best-pla... ) into my workflow. It ticks a lot of the boxes other people mention in this thread: markdown for interoperability, filebased and quick searches.

I looked at the screenshot and said "wow that's ugly". Then I saw the caption: "Don’t worry: The icons on the left can be made much less ugly." Nicely done.

Good to see the best features of Notational Velocity being carried forward. I like the sound of iCloud syncing, too.

Re: Ask HN: Favorite note-taking software?

#319

Post by gmac »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #295
mamp wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 started to switch to Apple Notes a year ago, loved it, then discovered there is no good way to export all notes as text for backup. Any suggestions?

Open up Script Editor and paste in:

    tell application "Notes" to get body of every note
You might of course want to build a little around this — save the results, etc.
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