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Ask HN: Favorite note-taking software?

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Re: Ask HN: Favorite note-taking software?

#71
I use https://www.lifepim.com (disclaimer, I wrote it - it is free for all to use though).

The notes side of it works well, and has enough markdown features to allow me to transfer all my GDrive notes to it.

Like others have mentioned, I get tired when apps and sites go unsupported or have shitty (if any) export features.

Re: Ask HN: Favorite note-taking software?

#74
Notational Velocity (Mac only, open source) http://notational.net

It allows you to very quickly do a full text search, it saves the files as plain text, it supports external editors (I use MacVim) and it syncs with simplenote.com so I can see my notes on NV on my various macs and the simplenote app on my phone. It's very minimal and I like it a lot.

Re: Ask HN: Favorite note-taking software?

#77
post #54
post #21

plain text files and your favorite editor, whatever that is. things that should be encrypted are either gpg encrytped or put in my password manager. Bonus if you format your plain text with markdown or asciidoc or whatever your fav. plain text markup language is. Don't make it more complicated than it needs to be. Put it in a VCS for super double bonus points :) me personally: Vim, asciidoc and in a fossil repo.

Same here. Vim, Markdown, and GitHub. I can easily sync between my laptop, work computer, and desktop via git.

Emacs, Markdown, and self-hosted Git. I love when things are too simple to break.

Re: Ask HN: Favorite note-taking software?

#78

I'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've been doing that for quite some time as well, but recentlish (Especially because I can (if it ever becomes unmaintained), export the data to my preferred format with a simple script, as everytthing is saved in plain json files.

[0] https://github.com/BoostIO/Boostnote

Re: Ask HN: Favorite note-taking software?

#79
Supermemo, but it's not really a note taking program perse. Most people use it to learn languages or skill specific vocabulary. But, I throw my notes in there too.

Edit:

Specifically, the incremental reading feature and annotated notes. Essentially you can add an article like it's a flashcard, and then it'll schedule it for reviews, and you can even review your notes. If you need something specific, you can search for the note itself.

Re: Ask HN: Favorite note-taking software?

#80

I'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…

Alternatively, you can use something which saves in a format that would be trivial to make a replacement for reading/writing it.

One example is jrnl[1]. Each journal (collection of entries) is written in a flat text file. You can optionally encrypt it with AES. They even give you reference code on how you could decrypt it yourself[2].

If jrnl stops being a thing, I can probably re-implement all of its functionality in a day. Or someone else can. Its output is very simple.

1. http://jrnl.sh/overview.html

2. http://jrnl.sh/encryption.html#manual-decryption

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