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Show HN: Favorite writing / journaling tool? Half-finished projects welcome

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Re: Show HN: Favorite writing / journaling tool? Half-finished projects welcome

#11
post #3

I've been meaning to build a simple writing/research tool that is basically GitHub Markdown combined with two additional features: 1. A "tagging" component at the sentence level, so I can tag individual sentences. For example, the previous sentence could be tagged with {{feature-idea}}. 2. {{feature-idea}} A semantic search capability where I can see which other sentences in all of my documents are similar to the one…

I have been getting much more into Freeplane, but notably with an appreciation for the two items you laid out here. It’s an interesting approximation, and I’ve been having a lot of fun with it. [0] https://www.freeplane.org/wiki/index.php/Home

Thank you! Will definitely try it.

Re: Show HN: Favorite writing / journaling tool? Half-finished projects welcome

#12
I use Ghost [1] for my blog (self hosted), and the drafts folder is perfect for me to jot notes and collect thoughts over time.

My work-flow is like this:

  1. It usually starts with a thought on a post-it or notebook
  2. Bring that immediately into a draft on ghost blog
  3. Start brian-dumping fragments, thoughts, sentences 
  4. Group fragments together under headings, which get a clever title
  5. that forms the bones of the thought. Some thoughts get evicted or pushed into its own separate draft.
  6. Back-fill each section with research and supporting materials (links, pictures, code snippets, etc)
  7. write a tldr;/summary on top. Conclusion on bottom.
  8. share draft with colleagues and mom
  9. publish
[1] - https://ghost.org

Re: Show HN: Favorite writing / journaling tool? Half-finished projects welcome

#14
I made TeXstudio because I wanted to write a novel using LaTeX

Then I integrated LanguageTool as grammar checker

Then I tried to modify LanguageTool as part-of-speech classifier. Because I found writing advice like, strike through every adjective and adverb, and check if the sentence sounds better without them. But I do not want to strike them manually, so I need a part-of-speech classifier to do it. However, this part has never worked properly.

Re: Show HN: Favorite writing / journaling tool? Half-finished projects welcome

#15

I guarantee you will be more productive at writing using the method of a single pen and a legal-sized yellowpad than you will at basically any other tool on the computer, even though that seems counterintuitive. Very few people have the discipline to not flip tabs. Try it as an experiment. Attempt to write one document on your computer and one document in another room without any electronics in that room. I guarantee…

OP here, and funnily enough: I completely agree with you. I write everything of substance on legal pad first, which I later “keyboard” (transcription of writing in pad + some editing ) onto a digital system.

For long stuff, I organize my legal pads into binders (pre-3-hole-punched).

Thattttt said, I love digital writing tools as a toy, and in this case I’m looking for a specific tool already. I think I literally referred to it as an indulgence in my text post.

Great points though, I appreciate the perspective. Happy writing to you as well.

Re: Show HN: Favorite writing / journaling tool? Half-finished projects welcome

#16
Back then i used basic text editor to create personal notes. But over times, i got cluttered folder with a lot of .txt files.

Then i made this as a replacement, a web-based notetaking app. With WYSIWYG editor, support linking to other notes (wikilink), image paste support, basic formatting, autosaves.

https://github.com/altilunium/rtnF

Re: Show HN: Favorite writing / journaling tool? Half-finished projects welcome

#17
post #3

I've been meaning to build a simple writing/research tool that is basically GitHub Markdown combined with two additional features: 1. A "tagging" component at the sentence level, so I can tag individual sentences. For example, the previous sentence could be tagged with {{feature-idea}}. 2. {{feature-idea}} A semantic search capability where I can see which other sentences in all of my documents are similar to the one…

I've been using logseq.com and it is great.

It has bidirectional references like you discussed, and sentence level referencing, and embedding.

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