Daily I use a FileMaker default template as it allows me to attach docs and media along with text. And by-the-way, it has kept almost 5 years of daily pics of me! For meetings I use an iPad Pro with Apple Pencil using GoodNotes4—works great. I take a pic of the handouts and mark them up. Easy, orderly.
Ask HN: Favorite note-taking software?
191–200 of 436 posts
Re: Ask HN: Favorite note-taking software?
#192I've given up on using any sort of branded app for notetaking. At best it's open source and the maintainers will lose interest in a few years. When you write things down, you're investing in your future. It's silly to use software that isn't making that same investment. After trying Evernote, Workflowy, Notion, wikis, org-mode, and essentially everything else I could find, I gave up and tried building my own system f…
I do the same and keep it in gitlab private repo.
On my android phone I have GIT client because I mostly write my notes on the phone.
I just don't feel like using some stupid apps for notes. I understand that someone not technical would like to use app for that.
Re: Ask HN: Favorite note-taking software?
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not proprietary, it's still just plain text, and can be edited with anything. Emacs adds a lot of nice features on top of it to manipulate that text, but it's still just text. See http://karl-voit.at/2017/09/23/orgmode-as-markup-only/ .
Yes, I have been fooled by the "oh it's just plain text" notion also and have regretted it. Did you try to actually open an org-mode file with anything else than Emacs? Did you try get any meaningful information out of it on a mobile phone or with an another editor? I did...
Take a look at Orgzly for interacting with org files on Android, and set up a dropbox shared folder between your devices, including your smartphone. Works well for me.
As for extracting meaningful info with other editors, I would say it depends on how you structure your notes. For me it's just a very long bullet list with some tags here and there. So a plain text editor will only 'add' some star characters at the beginning of each lines, which appears quite readable to my eyes.
Re: Ask HN: Favorite note-taking software?
#194I write markdown in Visual Studio Code and just save it in a notes directory.
I can then grep across the directory, or use VSC in built search in folder tool. I also get the formatting of markdown. It is already on my machine and usually already open and running.
Re: Ask HN: Favorite note-taking software?
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a huge difference. It's proprietary , what I mean by that is you can't really edit it with anything else than Emacs. I used it with Spacemacs, and when an upgrade broke it, I left with no notes... Very frustrating experience, I immedieately abandoned it when it happened. Never used org-mode since then.
In that sense markdown is also proprietary, since you need some editor making things easy for you to manipulate and navigate the text document(that's all emacs does; even github renders org docs).
Except Markdown looks like text with some special characters to embellish it a little. It's perfectly readable and legible in any text editor. Navigation is the only thing lacking, but manipulation is as easy as manipulating text is in your editor of choice.
Note: I don't know what raw orgmode files look like, maybe they're similar to Markdown.
Re: Ask HN: Favorite note-taking software?
#196I’ve given up on absolutely everything; As of now, I just keep .txt files in my Dropbox, accessed via any app on the market.
How is this 'giving up'? Sounds like a good solution without being locked in to me.
Exactly- it is the best I have found so far. However, the main problem hides in everything to do with images, as they cannot be appended to a text document. Because of that, I am using this naming scheme:
example.txt needs an appended image. In the doc, I write “[0]”, and create an image named example-0.jpg.
Re: Ask HN: Favorite note-taking software?
#197I use Evernote Premium and I’m mostly content with it. It’s worth $95/year to me. There’s no device limit in the Premium edition. You also get full-text search in PDFs and other nice features. So far I haven’t found any alternative that suits me better. I really like being able to use different notebooks for different purposes and being able to tag individual notes. (This is something that e.g. Apple’s Notes is missi…
If you are using Apple devices, consider switching to Bear, it is $15 annually. Tagging is the main organizing method in the app, also much faster then Evernote.
Re: Ask HN: Favorite note-taking software?
#198I use IA Writer in a Git repository inside of Dropbox. I have a shell command that creates a new Markdown note for today's date in the right folder.
Dropbox lets me access files across devices. I got commit every day or so using another shell shortcut, which makes all of the markdown files readable on the GitHub UI.
I was getting tired of proprietary software solutions. This just works. If I wanted more advanced tooling, I would probably add a build system like Softcover.io.
Re: Ask HN: Favorite note-taking software?
#199If on the Mac ecosystem, Bear is Apple notes but with fewer sync bugs and more useful features (like a close cousin of markdown and amazing tagging). I've switched to that for notes that might stick around for a while (from Evernote and Apple notes, though I still forward emails into the former as a convenient archive). For transient notes (like shopping lists etc.) I just use drafts on iOS. Seems to work for me afte…
It is literally markdown if you turn on the markdown compatibility mode.
Re: Ask HN: Favorite note-taking software?
#200It really depends on how you do note-taking. In my case, I take notes related to my research projects, meetings and things I find useful, which require me to find a software with Latex, MathJax support. I don't like latex code inside my note, I like the rendered view. Second requirement is that this software should be mobile support. On the bus, on waiting line etc, I should be able to edit/add notes.
Outliners are good for noting ideas. It makes you think more structural and organized. The less bullet you spend, the simple the idea becomes, that way reading it requires less energy.
I use Dynalist because of the reasons above and its mobile app is 10/10.