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Joplin is an open source note-taking app

joplinapp.org

31–40 of 110 posts

Re: Joplin is an open source note-taking app

#31
post #6

My problem with Joplin is that on my M1 Macbook pro it really shows how much of an Electron app it really is, in the worst ways. Extreme memory use and UI lag for an application which displays text. That said, aside from performance it's quite satisfying to use. It's very simple and does its job well. I recently migrated to Obsidian and although the learning curve is steeper, I'm quite happy with the results.

That’s exactly why I’m building a note-taking app in Qt C++ and QML that is vastly more performant than other note-taking apps[1]. This degradation of software by web apps shows in the lack of optimal resource utilization of even one of the most powerful chips of recent times. [1] https://www.get-plume.com/

Nice that's exactly what I'm looking for, as I use KDE and Qt apps fit in so well.

Will the client side be open source? I hope so because I'm on FreeBSD so you probably won't make a compiled version :)

Re: Joplin is an open source note-taking app

#32
post #6

My problem with Joplin is that on my M1 Macbook pro it really shows how much of an Electron app it really is, in the worst ways. Extreme memory use and UI lag for an application which displays text. That said, aside from performance it's quite satisfying to use. It's very simple and does its job well. I recently migrated to Obsidian and although the learning curve is steeper, I'm quite happy with the results.

That’s exactly why I’m building a note-taking app in Qt C++ and QML that is vastly more performant than other note-taking apps[1]. This degradation of software by web apps shows in the lack of optimal resource utilization of even one of the most powerful chips of recent times. [1] https://www.get-plume.com/

> This degradation of software by web apps shows the lack of optimal resource utilization of even one of the most powerful chips of recent times.

A-fucking-men. Web tools are for building web apps, software tools are for building software. I avoid all these goddamn electron things like the plague if at all fucking possible.

Garbage on phones, garbage on computers, garbage on tablets. Garbage.

Re: Joplin is an open source note-taking app

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went from Notion to Joplin for note taking: I drop 1000s of images in a note and annotate them and publish them. Notion crashed all the time; so badly that support apologised and had to delete things for me. Joplin has 0 issues with it; it scrolls super fast, is a pleasure to work with. Also on a m1. I cannot say I noticed any bad behaviour compared to others, included Obsidian.

I went from Notion and Joplin to Obsidian mostly because Obsidian stores stuff as regular files on my filesystem and I can easily interact with them with external programs and scripts. Joplin, while being open source itself, has a "proprietary"[1] storage format I can't be arsed to figure out how to interact with. [1] Meaning non-standard in this case, Joplin is the only software using Joplin's storage method

is there anything with a lightweight learning curve akin to Obsidian that uses a accessible format?

Re: Joplin is an open source note-taking app

#34
post #6

My problem with Joplin is that on my M1 Macbook pro it really shows how much of an Electron app it really is, in the worst ways. Extreme memory use and UI lag for an application which displays text. That said, aside from performance it's quite satisfying to use. It's very simple and does its job well. I recently migrated to Obsidian and although the learning curve is steeper, I'm quite happy with the results.

I wish I could compile those electron apps from source à la FreeBSD’s ports or whatever. I’d rather have the laptop compiling for a few days than using electron

Re: Joplin is an open source note-taking app

#35
post #27
post #6

My problem with Joplin is that on my M1 Macbook pro it really shows how much of an Electron app it really is, in the worst ways. Extreme memory use and UI lag for an application which displays text. That said, aside from performance it's quite satisfying to use. It's very simple and does its job well. I recently migrated to Obsidian and although the learning curve is steeper, I'm quite happy with the results.

Does Obsidian feature a way to seamlessly sync between devices that doesn't rely on a propreitary service or external tool (Syncthing)?

Obsidian has a built in sync feature if you pay for it. https://obsidian.md/sync

Re: Joplin is an open source note-taking app

#36
post #6

My problem with Joplin is that on my M1 Macbook pro it really shows how much of an Electron app it really is, in the worst ways. Extreme memory use and UI lag for an application which displays text. That said, aside from performance it's quite satisfying to use. It's very simple and does its job well. I recently migrated to Obsidian and although the learning curve is steeper, I'm quite happy with the results.

That’s exactly why I’m building a note-taking app in Qt C++ and QML that is vastly more performant than other note-taking apps[1]. This degradation of software by web apps shows in the lack of optimal resource utilization of even one of the most powerful chips of recent times. [1] https://www.get-plume.com/

will the mobile all be fast as well?

my issue is i can’t find a platform with a fast mobile app

it seems they’re all react native

Re: Joplin is an open source note-taking app

#37
post #19

Would appreciate any folks here who have tried both Obsidian and Joplin to summarize the key differentiators for them and which one they ended up on. (on x platform, Windows/iOS use case here, but just post your needs) I tried to move to Obsidian from Evernote after they raised the subscription price but wasn't able to onboard successfully - Obsidian seemed powerful but was too customizable for me, had to get back to…

I was suffering with Joplin for years and finally found the time to migrate to Obsidian a few months back. So far I'm much happier and more importantly, more productive.

The biggest points are about the UX. My workflow requires switching between multiple notes rapidly (e.g., TODO list, Project 1, Project 2, Employee 1, Employee 2, Meeting Notes 1, and so on) and Joplin doesn't have native tabs. The plugin is only so so but it works only on desktop (I'm on Mac).

On mobile it's a disaster. Doubly so on iPad which is just stretched phone version - working productively on iPad (which is otherwise just fine for my job) is impossible with Joplin. Plus the mobile app has awful design and awful navigation. Who on Earth would put the most used button to the top left corner? Swipe from the left doesn't work of course because the following:

Neither desktop of mobile app follow the system patterns. Keyboard shortucts, if they exist, are different. Navigation is different. Everything is sort of clunky.

I used Dropbox for sync and while it does work, it's very slow and there's no background sync. On a regular day I have to sync about 50 items (some of them are history I guess) which can take a minute or two, which is the time I don't have when I open my phone and want to quickly add an item to the TODO list. Couple that with no conflict resolution and a recipe for data loss is born :-) .

Initial sync on a new phone took me eight fucking hours when I had to keep the phone open and the app in the foreground.

What I do appreciate is the native encryption. Now I do all my work in Obsidian but keep Joplin for the secrets.

So this is the main problems I had with Joplin. Rant over (but you asked) :-)

Re: Joplin is an open source note-taking app

#38
post #27
post #6

My problem with Joplin is that on my M1 Macbook pro it really shows how much of an Electron app it really is, in the worst ways. Extreme memory use and UI lag for an application which displays text. That said, aside from performance it's quite satisfying to use. It's very simple and does its job well. I recently migrated to Obsidian and although the learning curve is steeper, I'm quite happy with the results.

Does Obsidian feature a way to seamlessly sync between devices that doesn't rely on a propreitary service or external tool (Syncthing)?

I sync Obsidian with iCloud Drive and it's been 100% reliable and very fast so far (a few months).

Re: Joplin is an open source note-taking app

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s exactly why I’m building a note-taking app in Qt C++ and QML that is vastly more performant than other note-taking apps[1]. This degradation of software by web apps shows in the lack of optimal resource utilization of even one of the most powerful chips of recent times. [1] https://www.get-plume.com/

will the mobile all be fast as well? my issue is i can’t find a platform with a fast mobile app it seems they’re all react native

I didn't yet try to create a mobile version, but I don't see why, as Qt Quick is very performant. I guess we'll have to wait till I port it and do some testing.

Re: Joplin is an open source note-taking app

#40
I have been using Joplin for a couple of years, first for work and then for everything else.

I love that it’s formatted, but it’s also just text. I normally leave it in markdown mode and edit that directly (learn the syntax, it’s easy). To paste into email, documents etc, put it to display mode and it’ll paste html. Good.

@cimnine The key feature for me is global search (ctrl/cmd+p) but it doesn’t work well enough!! 1. it doesn’t favour exact matches and 2. it doesn’t jump to the match. I use vi-mode if that’s important.

Overall it’s excellent IMO. There are clients for all major platforms.

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