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Show HN: Notable – A Markdown-based note-taking app that doesn't suck

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Re: Show HN: Notable – A Markdown-based note-taking app that doesn't suck

#81

Post by fabiospampinato »

oelmekki wrote: post #73

Hi Fabio, Congratulations on Notable, it's very slick, and exactly the kind of note taking app I was after. I'm mostly concerned about keeping my data offline these days, so Google Keep and Evernote were no fit for me. I take tons of notes every day, and ended up using the note app from Kontact (the PIM suite for KDE), mostly because I'm a heavy KDE user and it was properly integrated with Akonadi (KDE's PIM backend)…

I'm glad you like it too :)

> One suggestion : I would love, when I create a new note when having a Notebook selected, that this new note is automatically added with this tag (currently, manually importing data from Kontact is painfully long). Autocompletion of tags could do too.

Definitely, tag autocompletion may be a bit tricky but putting the note in the current tag should be implemented quickly.

Re: Show HN: Notable – A Markdown-based note-taking app that doesn't suck

#82

Post by fabiospampinato »

mettamage wrote: post #72

How about a notetaking app that also handles stylus input? IMO any note-taking app that doesn't suck handles stylus input gracefully as I make many notes that aren't easily expressable via UTF-8 text. And I could figure out how to do a TIKZ-like style of drawing schema's but using stylus input is way faster.

Unfortunately I don't use a stylus so for the first release of the app I focused on things I'm personally interested in.

Re: Show HN: Notable – A Markdown-based note-taking app that doesn't suck

#83

Post by anoncake »

legostormtroopr wrote: post #80
bgdam wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One important reason people choose to use Electron instead of opening the app in a Browser window, is that the browser blocks a lot of standard keyboard shortcuts. So for example, if you want to capture Ctrl+Tab and move to the next note, based on that, well, you can only do that in Electron. Another UX based reason, is that native menus offer a better UX than having to put buttons for each and every action inside th…

> So for example, if you want to capture Ctrl+Tab So use a different key combo? There are plenty to choose from. I use cloud9 and it uses Crtl+[ and Crtl+] to cycle between tabs.

Ctrl+Tab is the standard key combo for switching tabs. Not using it is like not using Alt+F4 to close the window.

Re: Show HN: Notable – A Markdown-based note-taking app that doesn't suck

#84

Post by fabiospampinato »

krsdcbl wrote: post #63
fabiospampinato wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being native isn't everything. As I mention in the readme I couldn't find an app that ticked all the boxes I'm interested in, which are: notes are written and rendered in GitHub-flavored Markdown, no WYSIWYG, no proprietary formats, I can run a search & replace across all notes, notes support attachments, the app isn't bloated, the app has a pretty interface, tags are indefinitely nestable and can import Evernote not…

I feel you on this, but for me the solution has been really simple so far: just a dedicated notes folder + good ol' atom. Ticks all the boxes & uses nothing but my default workspace

It doesn't tick all the boxes though, there's no good way of adding attachments to notes and the moment a note should be categorized into 2 or more folders the all thing falls apart.

Re: Show HN: Notable – A Markdown-based note-taking app that doesn't suck

#85

Post by fabiospampinato »

zoomablemind wrote: post #71
krsdcbl wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel you on this, but for me the solution has been really simple so far: just a dedicated notes folder + good ol' atom. Ticks all the boxes & uses nothing but my default workspace

Second that. Markdown is about lightweight, requiring just a text editor and a few neurons to memorize the markup. Markdown already handles 'attachments' via tag for image or HTML anchor for other file types. Prettify via CSS. Global search and replace indeed needs an extra effort. If faced with such a need, I'd just use any of active IDEs already installed, well, Atom should do.

Adding "attachments" like that, the way Boostnote also does it, is not portable nor ergonomic, since you need the full path to the file in question or you need to upload it somewhere.

Re: Show HN: Notable – A Markdown-based note-taking app that doesn't suck

#86

Post by fabiospampinato »

akho wrote: post #58
fabiospampinato wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being native isn't everything. As I mention in the readme I couldn't find an app that ticked all the boxes I'm interested in, which are: notes are written and rendered in GitHub-flavored Markdown, no WYSIWYG, no proprietary formats, I can run a search & replace across all notes, notes support attachments, the app isn't bloated, the app has a pretty interface, tags are indefinitely nestable and can import Evernote not…

I can tick those boxes with just a filesystem, a text editor, and grep. Except, maybe, Evernote import — no idea how that works.

Kind of, I see no good way of adding attachments to notes this way, and the moment a note belongs to 2 or more folders/tags the all thing falls apart.

Re: Show HN: Notable – A Markdown-based note-taking app that doesn't suck

#87

Post by fabiospampinato »

roryisok wrote: post #60
stephenr wrote: post #25

Describing an electron app as “doesn’t suck” is pretty rich on its own, but even more so when you consider that there are several existing native macOS Markdown editors.

I agree. Saying your editor doesn't suck implies that all others do suck, which is just shitting on everyone's work. Don't be that person

I didn't mean to shit on everybody else's work, but I really tried to find a note-taking app that ticked all the boxes _I_ am interested in and avoid coding it myself, but I really couldn't find one. In that sense it doesn't suck, I could have said "that it ticks all the boxes for me" but it would be less catchy maybe :)

Re: Show HN: Notable – A Markdown-based note-taking app that doesn't suck

#88

Post by fabiospampinato »

joeblau wrote: post #64

Visually, this application looks really nice, but where it falls down for me is in it's integration with macOS. My current Markdown editors all have iCloud sync as well as mobile applications so I can edit documents on my phone or tablet natively. I'd rather have deep vertical integration vs cross platform desktop use in an app like this.

Unfortunately I didn't have the time nor the need for making mobile apps for this, the situation may change in the future however.

Re: Show HN: Notable – A Markdown-based note-taking app that doesn't suck

#89

Post by fabiospampinato »

advanced__pizza wrote: post #56

Looks great. Nice work. I had similar checkboxes, and notion.so seemed to check most of them, and has been great.

Notion is just under a different philosophy, it tried to provide all features imaginable and kind of locks you into their service. Notable on the other end is just a pretty front-end for your notes directory basically.
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