Live data from Hacker News

Note Taking in 2021

blog.dornea.nu

191–200 of 213 posts

Re: Note Taking in 2021

#191
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've tried many alternatives, but I end up going back to Zim. I've been using it for a decade now with Dropbox/GDrive sync. I wish it had a mobile version and a better markdown editor like https://typora.io/

Yes. It's insane how many approaches I tried for note keeping. Zim is almost my favorite. Needs a mobile client though :(

Yup. Absolutely the biggest thing that its missing.

Re: Note Taking in 2021

#192
post #186

I believe the most important question regarding personal knowledge bases is how to make them social. In grad school I was for a year part of a small study group. We shared notes, on paper and aloud. It made each of us far, far better at the subject than we could have been on our own. And we were at most 7 people (sometimes only 3). When developing Hode[1], and when helping develop Semantic Synchrony[2], I imagined so…

> Brandon Toner on Twitter[3] even introduced me to a hashtag for them ... Is it #digitalgarden? > I believe the most important question regarding personal knowledge bases is how to make them social. AFAIK note taking apps often have a feature to share notes, if that counts, e.g., Obsidian (view-only), Roam (view and edit), Notion (view, edit, and comment), and so on. With sharing and comments enabled, you can even u…

I did not know about Agora! Thanks! Diving in ...

Re: Note Taking in 2021

#193

Yet another opinion :) I tried emacs and org mode but my vim muscle memory was too strong. I ended up mostly sticking with vim-wiki https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki I have a very small script that syncs my local wiki(s) with a private GitHub repo. I set them all up to be in markdown. I use Google Keep for just random stuff I have to jot down but don't really care about organizing. Honestly though, even plain markdo…

Similar here! Vimwiki for the more timeless things (recipes, keyboard shortcuts, etc), Google Keep for the (multiplayer!) shopping list and several relatively transient todo lists.

Re: Note Taking in 2021

#194
post #48

The article mentions Org mode a lot. If you want to try it, but are no Emacs user or also want to use it on mobile (iOS or Android), there is a FOSS solution called organice which I use daily for everything from notes to private and professional project management: https://github.com/200ok-ch/organice

Oh, wow, interesting idea. I'm definitely bookmarking this.

Thank you for the kind words _/\_

If you've got any questions, feel free to ask them anytime!

Re: Note Taking in 2021

#195
post #6

This is going to be one of those threads where everyone rattles off their own note-taking setup, which is great and all. So: There's a lot of things people tend to want from note-taking setups: easy entry, navigation and organization, wiki-like linkages, export to various formats, encryption. What I've found actually matters for my day-to-day and gets me to actually take lots of notes, though, is just (1) search and…

I think org mode is frankly over-rated but having said that I use it myself for two things: a daily work-log and some tabular timekeeping. Really? the mechanics of the indent model are pretty crap.

It is possible to move from org to Markdown and then do better for pdf, eg via pandoc or some other emacs mode. I've used that in the past, because Markdown mode was even more confusing to me as a non-native emacs user.

That vi never got an org mode before the great uplift to vim says a lot to me. Emacs had more modes than there are things in heaven, Horatio. (than are dreamt of in your philosophy of editors)

Re: Note Taking in 2021

#196
post #67

I write markdown in text files and organize them into directories backed up by dropbox ( but could be anything really ). It works way better than all the different note taking apps I've used.

You'll probably like Obsidian.md

not really, vscode with preview on works in a similar way, but I don't really need to use it like that, mostly I just navigate the directories and find the file with the notes I'm interested in reading. If I do forget where something is, simple search finds it and I don't even consume it as rendered markdown, usually just as plain text. I find it really useful, I have a ton of notes on all kinds of things that I keep referring to.

Re: Note Taking in 2021

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I migrated to ZIM from OneNote desktop. OneNote Desktop was everything I needed. Did not migrate to the OneNote cloud thing. Nowadays it's ZIM wiki using SVN as a backend. Not missing out on anything in particular. Ok, the table plugin for ZIM is still lacking IMHO.

OneNote allows hand written notes, that I use every time. Does ZIM or another note taking app for Linux allow hand notes?

None that I found :( You can in theory use inkscape for sketching and then put the resulting SVG into Zim or any note taking app that allows embedding SVGs, but that's the best it gets from what I could find.

Re: Note Taking in 2021

#198

I spent years experimenting with note taking/personal knowledge bases. After moving on from Evernote, I even wrote my own clone in Clojure and Clojurescript with a Firefox plugin for web capture. I am now done with such time wasting nonsense. For several years I have been using Apple Notes (all my Apple devices except Apple Watch, and web browser version on Linux). I bought a simple app that exports all notes to a st…

Ah! Backups have always been by worry. What simple app are you using for the "save as TXT" backups?

Re: Note Taking in 2021

#199

I tried Obsidian, Zettlr, Standard Notes, Dendron, even tried taking notes in Scrivener. In the end I bit the bullet and started using Emacs + Org-Mode/Org-Roam. The flexibility and customization are unparallelled. I use it for to-dos, for random scribbles, for in-depth musings. Categorizing thoughts and linking them together is so much easier than any other software I've used. The first few months are really tough,…

I'm also using (Doom) Emacs + ORG-Mode. However exporting my notes to the outside world is not that smooth as with Tiddlywiki. I know there is ox-hugo (which BTW I use to write my blog posts) but for a Zettelkasten/knowledge DB I think it's not enough.

Re: Note Taking in 2021

#200
post #70
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Obsidian and one thing I'm not getting about peoples concerns with e2e encryption - does nobody realize once it's decrypted on the devices you use (work laptops, etc since it's your ubiquitous note taking app) that anyone with access to your laptop (IT) has full access to every single .md file downloaded to your system? People talk about encrypting their vaults and everything else all the time. I've never seen…

e2e encryption is not trying to solve the problem you describe. If I'm going to open and view private notes on a non-private machine, no amount of encryption will help me.

Or you store your notes in another method (online, remote ovier ssh/rdp) so they're not plain text files accessible to anyone.

Some local note apps store them in dbs that would require auth, etc.

I just think this is a huge pitfall of using markdown notes.

Post reply on HN