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/tap – Powerful and customizable note-taking system

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Re: /tap – Powerful and customizable note-taking system

#51

Post by MR4D »

haswell wrote: post #43
optymizer wrote: post #38

I follow an unwritten rule that I will always congratulate anyone on shipping anything. Shipping anything is hard and deserves praise, so congratulations! Unfortunately I'm also realizing that I got to a point in life where I just roll my eyes when I see yet another note-taking, or to-do app, or any other spin on the same trivial problem that we solved 1000 years ago and now are just beating a dead horse, almost like…

The note taking space is interesting to me. You say the problem is solved, and yet, every time I see a new app in this space, I perk up because I hope that maybe this is the one that will resonate/work for me. Note taking is a deeply personal process. Physical notebooks as a medium are infinitely flexible but apps are not. This means that 100 different people writing notes on paper might be doing so in 100 different…

My opinion is slightly different - I don’t think note taking is about the app, but rather about the process. Because of that, all of us will always be looking for something to make that process something better than we currently experience.

To me, it’s either paper, Notepad(or any simple text app), or Excel. Everything else is about the process.

But then, maybe I’ve become old and crusty and just don’t know it yet. Sigh.

Re: /tap – Powerful and customizable note-taking system

#52

Post by friedman23 »

optymizer wrote: post #38

I follow an unwritten rule that I will always congratulate anyone on shipping anything. Shipping anything is hard and deserves praise, so congratulations! Unfortunately I'm also realizing that I got to a point in life where I just roll my eyes when I see yet another note-taking, or to-do app, or any other spin on the same trivial problem that we solved 1000 years ago and now are just beating a dead horse, almost like…

Note taking is solved, find me an app that solves note organizing and note retrieval and I will pay for that

Re: /tap – Powerful and customizable note-taking system

#53

Post by lostintangent »

austinvhuang wrote: post #41
lostintangent wrote: post #17

Congrats on the release! I _really_ love the simple approach this tool takes. Though personally, I view note taking as “commodity” enough, that I prefer to own my data, and use my existing editor setup. If folks are looking for a productive, yet low-ceremony note taking workflow, GitHub.dev might be worth a look, since it provides the benefits of using Markdown, a GitHub repo, and VS Code, all from the browser: http:…

I'm working on local-first OSS for this sort of second brain thing called OpenMemex. The data store is sqlite (wasm/rust frontend) with programmable integrations in mind: https://github.com/austinvhuang/openmemex

Looks really interesting! Thanks for sharing

Re: /tap – Powerful and customizable note-taking system

#54

Post by smoldesu »

joe8756438 wrote: post #44
optymizer wrote: post #38

I follow an unwritten rule that I will always congratulate anyone on shipping anything. Shipping anything is hard and deserves praise, so congratulations! Unfortunately I'm also realizing that I got to a point in life where I just roll my eyes when I see yet another note-taking, or to-do app, or any other spin on the same trivial problem that we solved 1000 years ago and now are just beating a dead horse, almost like…

Thanks! I made /tap and I agree with a lot of what you're saying. The thing is, working on tap has been and continues to be fun! I think there are so many note-taking apps because a. they _can be_ easy to make and b. because everyone has their own way they want to take a note. I think of tap less as a note-taking system, more like the system to make the system. Sure there's a long way to go to _fully_ realize that, b…

> how many note-taking systems have S-expression formulas that support nested functions?

Obsidian, Workflowy, Roam Research, Dynalist, Quire, Asana and Org Mode, just to name a few off the top of my head.

Re: /tap – Powerful and customizable note-taking system

#55

Post by loceng »

haswell wrote: post #43
optymizer wrote: post #38

I follow an unwritten rule that I will always congratulate anyone on shipping anything. Shipping anything is hard and deserves praise, so congratulations! Unfortunately I'm also realizing that I got to a point in life where I just roll my eyes when I see yet another note-taking, or to-do app, or any other spin on the same trivial problem that we solved 1000 years ago and now are just beating a dead horse, almost like…

The note taking space is interesting to me. You say the problem is solved, and yet, every time I see a new app in this space, I perk up because I hope that maybe this is the one that will resonate/work for me. Note taking is a deeply personal process. Physical notebooks as a medium are infinitely flexible but apps are not. This means that 100 different people writing notes on paper might be doing so in 100 different…

I've come to think the missing piece is a system or process of helping each person experiment through different note taking styles or systems, until they find what resonates best with them, or exposing them to various systems, different ones which they may realize work best for different contexts of what they're doing - for different projects or mental contexts, etc.

I too have an idea for a "note taking" app - essentially better streamlining, automating, and extending what I currently do - but maybe the process or steps I currently take are integral to what I currently do working. Who knows. Will I ever get the chance to create the custom "note taking" app that I envision? Who knows.

For now, because of my situation with severe chronic pain and how it impacts/disrupts my executive function, I will have multiple TODO lists on q-cards, and dozens and dozens TODO lists in various notes on my laptop and phone, none of which are synchronized - most of them lost to the past and therefore inherently part of a backlog of relatively unimportant things that otherwise would surface again in my mind or life if they were important enough.

Re: /tap – Powerful and customizable note-taking system

#56

Post by interleave »

optymizer wrote: post #38

I follow an unwritten rule that I will always congratulate anyone on shipping anything. Shipping anything is hard and deserves praise, so congratulations! Unfortunately I'm also realizing that I got to a point in life where I just roll my eyes when I see yet another note-taking, or to-do app, or any other spin on the same trivial problem that we solved 1000 years ago and now are just beating a dead horse, almost like…

Oh my, I've gotten similarly cynical as of late for practically the same reasons.

But before anything else, congratulations on the launch!

I've narrowed down to pen and paper[^1] and Obsidian for later remixing and publishing[^2]

Having gotten used to how usable and fast pen and paper is, I wanted the same feeling: Take a quick markdown note while working without having to keep Obsidian running in the background, switch to Obsidian to write and to leave my keyboard.

None of the existing note-taking menu bar apps[^3] had what I needed. So I made my own that fits my needs perfectly[^4].

A single global hotkey ⌘-⌥-N opens the note popover, ⌘-S saves the note into my Obsidian vault.

If you want, check it out! It's the simplest, least-frills way I could come up with to jot down a markdown note

[^1]: My pen and paper notebooks: https://publish.obsidian.md/alexisrondeau/%E2%AD%90%EF%B8%8F...

[^2]: My digital garden: https://publish.obsidian.md/alexisrondeau/

[^3]: Note-taking Menu Bar Apps: https://www.macmenubar.com/note-taking-apps/

[^4]: QuickDown.app: https://github.com/akaalias/quickdown

Re: /tap – Powerful and customizable note-taking system

#57

Post by mcbishop »

haswell wrote: post #43
optymizer wrote: post #38

I follow an unwritten rule that I will always congratulate anyone on shipping anything. Shipping anything is hard and deserves praise, so congratulations! Unfortunately I'm also realizing that I got to a point in life where I just roll my eyes when I see yet another note-taking, or to-do app, or any other spin on the same trivial problem that we solved 1000 years ago and now are just beating a dead horse, almost like…

The note taking space is interesting to me. You say the problem is solved, and yet, every time I see a new app in this space, I perk up because I hope that maybe this is the one that will resonate/work for me. Note taking is a deeply personal process. Physical notebooks as a medium are infinitely flexible but apps are not. This means that 100 different people writing notes on paper might be doing so in 100 different…

I assume most note-taking apps originated with someone figuring out what system / process resonates for them. But ultimately that system / process is optimal only for that person. I've given up on adapting an off-the-shelf app... in part because I lack the self awareness here to know what's optimal for me. It's only in the process of working it out for myself on a basic canvas (e.g. a spreadsheet, text files, pen and paper) that I'll have any idea what will work and stick. I'm many iterations into that process. I'll look to /tap for inspiration! It looks awesome, props.

Re: /tap – Powerful and customizable note-taking system

#58

Post by dysoco »

You might be already be aware of this but you might want to take into account the fact that many countries do not use SMS at all, first because it's non-free/expensive and secondly because people have just grown used to not even realize it's an option.

Here in South America it's ALL Whatssapp, I don't think I've ever sent an SMS in 10 years.

Re: /tap – Powerful and customizable note-taking system

#59

Post by joe8756438 »

tsuujin wrote: post #50
joe8756438 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally! I made tap and I still use org-mode for a lot of stuff! I think we all think slightly different things when we hear "notes" It is both an artifact and also a system for capturing the artifacts. the artifact is often, but not always, just some boring text -- but the way it is captured and used can be really interesting and as varied as the artifacts themselves. _so. many. possibilities._!

I’m an avid org-mode user, all of my work happens there. Can you give me the elevator pitch for why I would pay for tap over my existing org-mode + captures + agenda?

Not really. But _some_ part of my motivation to build tap was the difficulty convincing anybody to use emacs.

Here are a couple points anyway:

- I love getting email summaries of different note categories. I email myself a list of all my programming related reading saturday morning, it's great.

- Entering a quick note via sms is hard to beat, especially because /tap sends me text messages every day and so it's always pretty high up on the recent messages list

edit: formatting

Re: /tap – Powerful and customizable note-taking system

#60

Post by Naac »

dysoco wrote: post #58

You might be already be aware of this but you might want to take into account the fact that many countries do not use SMS at all, first because it's non-free/expensive and secondly because people have just grown used to not even realize it's an option. Here in South America it's ALL Whatssapp, I don't think I've ever sent an SMS in 10 years.

The same thing is unfortunately happening in the US. I would assume that iphone to iphone communication over imessage also does not go through traditional sms.
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