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Launch HN: Clover (YC S20) – Notes, whiteboarding, and daily planner in one tool

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Re: Launch HN: Clover (YC S20) – Notes, whiteboarding, and daily planner in one tool

#101

Post by scrollaway »

attasi wrote: post #94
ryanSrich wrote: post #89

This looks cool. I’ve been looking for a more permanent replacement for Roam. Everything I’ve tried so far (Obsidian, Logseq, Athens, Mem, etc.) have all been either clones, or just small improvements. I have yet to see something that grabs me in the same way Roam did years ago (block refs was an aha moment). My other must have feature is mobile, which it looks like you have covered. I haven’t tried Clover yet, but d…

Hey there, We don’t have block referencing in the same way Roam does it… yet. We allow you to copy a block link and paste it which will create a link to the block with text preview. We hope to add improved support for this soon. A 75k page import is quite the load. We have bulk markdown import but that may test its limits. How would you ideally perform that and where are you importing from?

Do you support importing from Notion?

Re: Launch HN: Clover (YC S20) – Notes, whiteboarding, and daily planner in one tool

#102

Post by ekanes »

attasi wrote: post #98
u2077 wrote: post #72

As others have mentioned, I want to try it first without having to create an account and give you my personal information. Also, your FAQ says “We do not track any personally identifiable information. Additionally we do not sell or share user data with third parties.” but your privacy policy says “ We may share your personal information with third party advertising companies to market our own Services and grow our Se…

Honestly, we haven’t even considered allowing a test drive without an account but the community here has given us some really great opinions in why that is so important. We’re going to discuss this and see if there’s some way we can do that. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this!

Beware this adds complexity for you, and all added complexity slows forward momentum. If you’re getting ENOUGH traction/feedback without this change I’d consider punting it for later when you’re closer to scaling mode not learning mode.

Re: Launch HN: Clover (YC S20) – Notes, whiteboarding, and daily planner in one tool

#104

Post by RamblingCTO »

attasi wrote: post #98
u2077 wrote: post #72

As others have mentioned, I want to try it first without having to create an account and give you my personal information. Also, your FAQ says “We do not track any personally identifiable information. Additionally we do not sell or share user data with third parties.” but your privacy policy says “ We may share your personal information with third party advertising companies to market our own Services and grow our Se…

Honestly, we haven’t even considered allowing a test drive without an account but the community here has given us some really great opinions in why that is so important. We’re going to discuss this and see if there’s some way we can do that. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this!

Also, please don't forget that HN can be a very strict bubble that is not representative. Most apps don't give you the option to test-drive that without an account. So I wouldn't implement this feature actually if it were me.

Good look with your idea, looks nice!

Re: Launch HN: Clover (YC S20) – Notes, whiteboarding, and daily planner in one tool

#105

Post by ryanSrich »

attasi wrote: post #95
ryanSrich wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No mobile app. It was promised years ago, and they’ve been silent on it since. Their mobile experience right now is nearly unbearable.

Would love some details on your device type and what about the app in unbearable. There’s plenty of room for improvement and we’d love to fix up whatever is affecting your experience.

Device type: iPhone 12 Pro. Latest iOS.

It’s really about not having the controls to do the things I normally do on a phone. A few examples:

- checking checkboxes is a nightmare. 7/10 times I attempt to check a checkbox on mobile it thinks I want to edit the block (assuming it’s because the touch points are too small - a native app would give better controls over explicitly editing certain parts of a block).

- reference brackets always produce something like this [[[something]] with the extra “[“. No idea why this happens, but it’s really annoying to type out [[, start typing my text, then get [[[ and have to manually move my cursor (which is already cumbersome on iOS) to delete the extra bracket.

- copying and pasting is easily my most used feature on mobile for almost any app. Copying in Roam on mobile is very unreliable. Sometimes text is selected, other times an entire block (which doesn’t actually produce a copy to my clipboard when I copy) is selected. A mobile app (or I guess a pwa could do the same) would allow for something like a copy button.

- lots of other small little quirks that I’m less concerned about: having to double click to create a new block, mobile menu bar is partially cutoff, etc.

Re: Launch HN: Clover (YC S20) – Notes, whiteboarding, and daily planner in one tool

#106

Post by ryanSrich »

attasi wrote: post #94
ryanSrich wrote: post #89

This looks cool. I’ve been looking for a more permanent replacement for Roam. Everything I’ve tried so far (Obsidian, Logseq, Athens, Mem, etc.) have all been either clones, or just small improvements. I have yet to see something that grabs me in the same way Roam did years ago (block refs was an aha moment). My other must have feature is mobile, which it looks like you have covered. I haven’t tried Clover yet, but d…

Hey there, We don’t have block referencing in the same way Roam does it… yet. We allow you to copy a block link and paste it which will create a link to the block with text preview. We hope to add improved support for this soon. A 75k page import is quite the load. We have bulk markdown import but that may test its limits. How would you ideally perform that and where are you importing from?

Could be markdown, json, or edn right now. Ideally an api integration to other tools (Roam, Notion, etc.) to preserve as much structure as possible, but I understand that’s a long shot.

Re: Launch HN: Clover (YC S20) – Notes, whiteboarding, and daily planner in one tool

#108

Post by deejaybog »

attasi wrote: post #96
deejaybog wrote: post #78

Congrats for the launch, it all looks very polished! "Surface" is the killer feature for me. Been waiting for someone to build this for a while. Conceptual question: isn't Document just a degenerate case of Surface? Can we just have one type of page ("Leaves" ;))? Document-like functionality could be exposed through the Text tool or as a separate "text editor". In the same vein, Favorites can be just a Label.

This is something we are constantly exploring. They are in fact the same under the hood but it’s been a tricky UX challenge to provide a seamless and intuitive way to toggle between the two. Always thinking about this though. Have any thoughts on it?

A Document is not the same as a Surface, it is a special case of Surface with formatting and positioning restrictions. So while you could "toggle" from Document to Surface, it can't be done the other way around without losing spatial placement information.

The landing page says "Write, sketch, and embed on an infinite canvas." Why not stick to the promise? I'll reiterate my suggestion: make all pages infinite and remove Document as a "root" page style. Its functionality can be exposed as a "rich text" block.

Re: Launch HN: Clover (YC S20) – Notes, whiteboarding, and daily planner in one tool

#109

Post by georgesequeira »

Wow, this non-linear note-taking space is blowing up. Just recently I started using https://museapp.com/. That being said, they're hierarchical if not linear but same concept with "inking"! Any others that people are trying?
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