Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Minimalist offline journal app with a chat interface

thezenjournal.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 66 posts

Re: Show HN: Minimalist offline journal app with a chat interface

#42

Post by randomor »

balaji1 wrote: post #36

App looks great. The autocomplete suggestions for hashtag is nice. Would you add functionality to edit notes? Also I want to keep a few different "threads". I guess the workaround is the hashtags.

Thanks! Editing will be coming, at some point, due to overwhelming demand. :) Hesitant about threads at the moment, as don't want to complicate existing interface. Some also suggested using horizontal scroll for different streams to separate work and life for example.

Re: Show HN: Minimalist offline journal app with a chat interface

#43

Post by LoveMortuus »

randomor wrote: post #23
clon wrote: post #21

Thank you. This will replace my notes app. One small thing that got me confused. Typing ? in my SO's Android (MS SwiftKey) automatically adds a space after it: "? ". No idea why it does that, but it stops search from working. Maybe skip leading whitespace?

Hope it helps you. That’s a surprising bug. Does it happen with every keyboard? Thanks for the report.

When I press the ? button it does also add a space. I'm using Google Keyboard.

Re: Show HN: Minimalist offline journal app with a chat interface

#45

Post by c9fc42ad »

randomor wrote: post #42
balaji1 wrote: post #36

App looks great. The autocomplete suggestions for hashtag is nice. Would you add functionality to edit notes? Also I want to keep a few different "threads". I guess the workaround is the hashtags.

Thanks! Editing will be coming, at some point, due to overwhelming demand. :) Hesitant about threads at the moment, as don't want to complicate existing interface. Some also suggested using horizontal scroll for different streams to separate work and life for example.

For threads you could implement something like Telegram's "Reply" feature. E.g. long press or swipe on a prior entry when typing a message, then when it's sent it has a clickable link to the prior message embedded above it.

Either way I'm definitely going to be checking this out as it's very similar to how I already use the Notes app for journaling type entries.

Re: Show HN: Minimalist offline journal app with a chat interface

#47

Post by anyfactor »

Otek wrote: post #32

if i could have a suggestion, rethink the home page design again. I was stunned because I couldn't focus on anything, I didn't understand what I was looking at for a good 5 seconds. My main complaint: the images are too big and the text too small. The information that you can lock using your fingerprint is unreasonably more prominent than the information about what the product is and where you can get it. Good luck,…

Seconded. It took way more than a minute to understand what is going on. I kept coming back to thread and the homepage trying to figure what this note app is even for. I am still not sure if it can be used on the browser or the desktop.

Re: Show HN: Minimalist offline journal app with a chat interface

#48

Post by progman32 »

Love the design. Lowest possible friction is important.

I personally a) dislike writing _anything_ on touch screens b) live in the terminal anyway. So I wrote a script called "n" that appends a timestamp to a text file, then: If there are command line arguments, it appends them to the file verbatim and exits. Else it opens vim, in edit mode just under the timestamp. For example:

  # n 'Hello, world!' # Writes a quick timestamped note and exits.
  # n # Adds timestamp, opens vim. For bigger notes.
Since the text file is on my NAS I can view it from all the devices I care about. Yes, I know it's not a system everyone would want (curlftpfs anyone?), but it works for me, and is guaranteed to remain readable for decades. It's just a text file on disk. I search it using the text editor.

Here's my scripts. I think I got the idea on HN somewhere, if it was you, feel free to set the record straight. Also I'm bad at shell scripts, so any suggestions welcome.

~/bin/n (add note):

  #! /usr/bin/env bash
  cd ~
  echo >> notes.txt
  echo -n '# ' >> notes.txt
  date '+%a %d %b %Y %T %Z' | tr -d "\n" >> notes.txt
  echo ' #' >> notes.txt
  if [[ $# -ne 0 ]]; then
    echo $@ >> notes.txt
    tail notes.txt
  else
    vim "+normal Go" +startinsert notes.txt
  fi
~/bin/nt (review notes):

  #! /usr/bin/env bash
  less +G ~/notes.txt
~/bin/ne (open vim at the last line for revisions):

  #! /usr/bin/env bash
  vim "+normal G" ~/notes.txt
I plan on setting up an old laptop with a proper full travel keyboard on my nightstand that boots straight to this, no graphical environment, nothing else.

Re: Show HN: Minimalist offline journal app with a chat interface

#50

Post by randomor »

progman32 wrote: post #48

Love the design. Lowest possible friction is important. I personally a) dislike writing _anything_ on touch screens b) live in the terminal anyway. So I wrote a script called "n" that appends a timestamp to a text file, then: If there are command line arguments, it appends them to the file verbatim and exits. Else it opens vim, in edit mode just under the timestamp. For example: # n 'Hello, world!' # Writes a quick t…

Have you heard of jrnl.sh? You may like it if you live in the terminal. I’d like one day support merging jrnl logs.
Post reply on HN