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Ask HN: Why are there no good note taking apps

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Ask HN: Why are there no good note taking apps

#1

Post by throwmea »

Why are there no good note taking apps on github or elsewhere that you can self host? Its really not that hard but almost all of them miss some crucial points.

I tried CodiMD, HedgeDoc, Jooplin, Standard Notes, Trillium and a few others.

- Use Markdown or plaintext for notes. This way they are easy to edit and display in almost everything. Don't render anything automatically for me if i don't want to (Trillium im looking at you FFS). - Let me use folders (im looking at you CodiMD, Hedgedoc, ...) - who in the world doesn't want to organize notes in any way? I don't need graphs or LaTeX, i need folders and tags and references and ways to organize myself. - Offer a Web Editor with proper account and user management (CodiMD, HedgeDoc, ...) and a custom landing page if you offer one at all. Let me setup accounts for other people and let me choose who i want to share notes with and who can edit them - just like nextcloud does. I dont need a Web Editor but its a really nice feature so why not implement it in a useful way that its actually managable? - Let me share notes online. Let me generate a Link that i can send others. Let them either enter a password or make it possible to revoke the link and genereate a new one or set a time limit for sharing. Bonus points if the notes are stored encrypted and are shared E2E with the password in the URL just like Mega did. I wouldn't even need a Web Editor if i got this instead. (- Dont use some over the top database structure or framework if not needed)

I feel like most of those note taking app creators dont even use their own product. Also i dont care about a fancy looking UI that uses 8GB of RAM and takes 10 Seconds to load, just make it work.

Re: Ask HN: Why are there no good note taking apps

#3

Post by throwmea »

nittanymount wrote: post #2

obsidian is a nice one, simple, focused... - it saves in md files, and could sync to repo or other ways. - good number of nice plugins - the md file makes things easier, e.g. could write terminal cli with bash script to add/edit notes in terminal ...

True but i havent found a way to do the publishing part nicely yet

Re: Ask HN: Why are there no good note taking apps

#5

Post by maximus-decimus »

throwmea wrote: post #3
nittanymount wrote: post #2

obsidian is a nice one, simple, focused... - it saves in md files, and could sync to repo or other ways. - good number of nice plugins - the md file makes things easier, e.g. could write terminal cli with bash script to add/edit notes in terminal ...

True but i havent found a way to do the publishing part nicely yet

Publish it how? It's mostly markdown, you should be able to use something like Pandoc to convert it to anything else.

Edit : even simpler, you could just put them on dropbox in a shared folder. It's markdown so it's human readable as pure text apart from the images (and you said you don't care about graphs)

Re: Ask HN: Why are there no good note taking apps

#7

Post by throwmea »

soared wrote: post #6

Extremely few people in the real world want markdown or plaintext notes. Text editors are better for almost all users. Google docs and drive accomplish everything you want I believe except for markdown.

Yes the only thing they dont accomplish is the lack of privacy / not being able to self host. Besides that youre probably right

Re: Ask HN: Why are there no good note taking apps

#8

Post by throwmea »

maximus-decimus wrote: post #5
throwmea wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True but i havent found a way to do the publishing part nicely yet

Publish it how? It's mostly markdown, you should be able to use something like Pandoc to convert it to anything else. Edit : even simpler, you could just put them on dropbox in a shared folder. It's markdown so it's human readable as pure text apart from the images (and you said you don't care about graphs)

I liked the idea that other users can edit it or that the markdown is rendered within the browser. CodiMD and Hedgedoc support that. They even support Co-Editing notes which is over the top for my needs. I just like the idea that i can rightclick a note in my notebook and publish it. They lack privacy and protection features though like password input or generating a new URL or proper user accounts. It would be nice if i could just send a special link and for the duration of X or until i revoke it friends can look at the rendered markdown with their browser. See https://demo.hedgedoc.org/features?both

Also Data Control is something i desire so i prefer self hosted.

Re: Ask HN: Why are there no good note taking apps

#9

Post by PaulHoule »

(1) Sometimes good notetaking apps get ruined over time. I was a fan of Microsoft's OneNote for a while until they stopped saving notes in a well-documented XML format and kept all the data in the cloud. Microsoft also worked hard to kill OneNote by shoving it up every orifice of the Windows 8 user: print something? the default it is to save the printout to one note? Look for an application on the taskbar? Microsoft shoved three icons for OneNote onto the taskbar?

Microsoft never seems to learn that this behavior is perceived as harassment and that if they push a product too hard, even a great product, people are going to be angry that OneNote is opening when they wanted to print something to the printer, all they are going to think is OneNote is crap and they want nothing to do with it.

(2) Personalized full-text search is a tough problem, since Google came out nobody has been satisfied with the results they get from other full-text search products.

Re: Ask HN: Why are there no good note taking apps

#10

Post by throwmea »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #4

> I feel like most of those note taking app creators dont even use their own product I think you have it backwards. They likely made the product to fit their own needs, and aren't going out of their way to understand and solve other user's needs.

Do you really think so? A lot of those github projects seem rather big.
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