That's what I use it for. I've found the "One column of concepts, with one column of articles in each concept" to be a really useful formalism. I found, when using wikis (even just my own) that it wound up being an unorganized mess.
I wound up writing a Quiver-alike for the windows/linux world at work.
I'm currently evaluating several different options, and I'm beginning to lean towards "One tool is probably not enough". Bigger tools such as Notion.so or a personal wiki are great as a repository of knowledge, you can easily browse and organize information. But writing a one-off quick note is not their forte. Lighter tools like markdown files in a text editor or a pure note app all handle the jot-down-a-note aspect very well, but they lack in organization and structure.
I prefer not having to use a bunch of tools for the same task, but here it seems like that's probably the best idea. Use a light note-taking app (or a physical notebook) to scribble things down, then enter it into a more repository-like software when I'm back at my computer.
(All of the following are macos only). I've used OmniOutliner, NoteBook (Circus Ponies, now defunct) and Growly Notes (www.growlybird.com). I've enjoyed using Growly Notes for many years, first as a free app and now as a nominal $4.99 on the App Store. It is closed source, but it's very versatile, flexible, and has a good scalable organization heirarchy (notebooks/sections/pages). It can import and export many different formats. It's also currently maintained and the support is good.
I feel like I've used them all. OneNote, Notion.so, NotePlan, Outliner, Mac Notes, Scrivner, Evernote.
I personally seem to gravitate towards OneNote for pure note taking. I personally like Notion.so more for notes that refer to tasks, using Notionas more of a task management and organization app vs pure note taking.
Outliner is a great app for quick note taking in nested format.
I'm a huge fan of Notion.so. They offer personal plans, and a free plan to students.
They've helped me organise my life - I've built a small personal "wiki" of study notes, WIP writing, calendar plans & email drafts.
I recently persuaded a friend to get it (so we can collaboratively work on a startup idea) and it's worked really smoothly. We both love it. Can't recommend enough.
I remember there being an IFTTT recipe for syncing DB and Google Drive, but I never gave it a try. I was using DB before I used Drive so I'm fine with Orgzly's reliance on it, but there are options.
I use syncthing to sync Org content between android and linux for orgzly consumption. I don't see any reason why I couldn't add a syncthing that copied into a mounted Google Drive if I wanted my info up on that cloud.
Came here to say the same thing. I used OneNote for a while and then SublimeText + PlainTasks which was actually great but I couldn't find a good mobile client for PlainTasks. And every single time in between I would go back to org-mode so eventually I just stopped searching. It has everything I need.
Turtl: https://turtlapp.com/
Largely because it's open source and privacy oriented, encrypted client-side. It's not as convenient and feature-rich as OneNote, but entrusting Microsoft with all my notes seems crazy.
I love Turtl's interface, tagging system, hosting options, multi-OS setup, and privacy stance. Turtl would be my go-to solution if they supported .md import/export. I think they have .json export planned for the next release, which might be tractable with a bit of pandoc manipulation, but not ideal.
I appreciate your excellent work. Google Keep, for example, exports both a .json and a folder of individual html files. I ended up piping the individual .html files through pandoc to .md files for idiosyncratic reasons. To be fair, I think turtl is so many leagues ahead of other solutions on the rest of its feature set that a .json export - which appears to be standard - is enough.
I suspect that turtl appeals to a lot of users with a large directory of plaintext notes who would be enticed to adopt the service if bulk textfile import were also streamlined. I hope the next release is a success!
Standard Notes: https://standardnotes.org/ for plain text, encrypted notes. Everything is easily importable or exportable in .txt format.
MS OneNote is great however they have stopped updating their desktop application (which allows offline notes) in favor of putting everything in the cloud (which will require a subscription to yet another cloud service if you exceed the OneDrive limits.)
Thank you, have searched for things like Standard Notes before but without success. That is why I participate in HN, many times it works better than a search engine, you just need to wait for the right topic to appear in the first page.
Indeed, one of the most important points is the Q&A in the FAQ: "Has Standard Notes completed a third-party security audit?" (Spoiler: yes, it did).
I like standard notes but having only plain text with no ability to attach images makes it unsuitable for me. I often take screen shots or photos as a note.
firefox notes for quick notes, dropbox paper is not bad, and zotero for more detailed research note taking. I frequently just open VIM with Pencil/mark down and take notes directly onto a Dropbox folder.
> I don't even understand why anyone would think that you need a dedicated app for note taking.
You're missing a big part: user experience.
Everything you said, sure, that's great. But the majority of developers (or really just people in general) don't want to spend their time learning each one of those things and trying to piece something together when a single app can do it good enough for them.
I too stopped using a dedicated note taking app but I already understand how to use markdown, git, etc. But for the average user or the user who just wants something to work without trying to look up multiple things or, hell, even the user who wants access on all of their devices like a phone, this solution make absolutely no sense.
I tried this solution as well, but I missed one core feature of Evernote, that you can search by tags or keywords, and it instantly list all related notes.
That is possible, but more impractical. In Evernote, I just click Win-Shift-F within any application, and then directly type the search keyword, and then get the list of notes, which I can preview in another window. It's just not the same experience.
Termux on Android with emacs/org mode and a ton of custom capture templates is awesome. Capturing eg. workouts and expenses to org tables and then processing them with python to get summaries.. quick restaurant or sento reviews in my journal .. whatever you want to capture quickly, you can tailor it to serve you. And, at the end of the day, it's all plain text synced by git.
I’ve (mostly) settled on using Google Docs for text-heavy notes, and just regular old paper for notes that will contain a lot of symbols and math. I also rely on paper for super short-lived notes and brainstorming.
You can get around the 2 device limit by getting a subscription to evernote.
I like DevonThink because it has good fuzzy searching. Good for finding articles that kept that kinda sorta has to do with the article you are currently writing.
I’ve recently started using TiddlyWiki for my work and personal notes. It really excels at modeling complex, real world data through its tagging system. Also, it is open source and locally hosted so it is safe for work or other sensitive information.
I tried to give TiddlyWiki a serious try but eventually had to leave the boat.
On multiple occasions, I lost drafted notes-- I had a couple of notes opened in the unsaved state, I was thinking I would save all of them together but lost them because of some reason.
I understand when it started but why now it has to be a single page JS powered app which comes with so many restrictions.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 296 ms ] threadI wound up writing a Quiver-alike for the windows/linux world at work.
I prefer not having to use a bunch of tools for the same task, but here it seems like that's probably the best idea. Use a light note-taking app (or a physical notebook) to scribble things down, then enter it into a more repository-like software when I'm back at my computer.
I personally seem to gravitate towards OneNote for pure note taking. I personally like Notion.so more for notes that refer to tasks, using Notionas more of a task management and organization app vs pure note taking.
Outliner is a great app for quick note taking in nested format.
They've helped me organise my life - I've built a small personal "wiki" of study notes, WIP writing, calendar plans & email drafts.
I recently persuaded a friend to get it (so we can collaboratively work on a startup idea) and it's worked really smoothly. We both love it. Can't recommend enough.
They have fantastic customer support -- try emailing them?
Too invested in the Google ecosystem to also depend on Dropbox.
I have tried some folder sync apps, but I prefer not to depend on those either.
Out of curiousity, is there a more ideal format for import/export?
I suspect that turtl appeals to a lot of users with a large directory of plaintext notes who would be enticed to adopt the service if bulk textfile import were also streamlined. I hope the next release is a success!
MS OneNote is great however they have stopped updating their desktop application (which allows offline notes) in favor of putting everything in the cloud (which will require a subscription to yet another cloud service if you exceed the OneDrive limits.)
Indeed, one of the most important points is the Q&A in the FAQ: "Has Standard Notes completed a third-party security audit?" (Spoiler: yes, it did).
To keep legibility, I always add the images at the bottom and reference them from the text.
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.
Edit: and there is![1] I'm definitely using this.
https://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=3645
- Markdown rendering can be done with pandoc
- Structure and search can be done with a solid file structure and grep
- Sync can be done with git or any other syncing solution out there.
- Encryption can be done with gpg (vim-gnupg)
Serious question: What feature is missing from this workflow (assuming the audience are developers)?
Oh and forwarding emails, adding todos and have them show up as due today, sorted, etc.
The last part could be scripted somewhat easily.
You're missing a big part: user experience.
Everything you said, sure, that's great. But the majority of developers (or really just people in general) don't want to spend their time learning each one of those things and trying to piece something together when a single app can do it good enough for them.
I too stopped using a dedicated note taking app but I already understand how to use markdown, git, etc. But for the average user or the user who just wants something to work without trying to look up multiple things or, hell, even the user who wants access on all of their devices like a phone, this solution make absolutely no sense.
I tried this solution as well, but I missed one core feature of Evernote, that you can search by tags or keywords, and it instantly list all related notes.
[1] https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/notes
[2] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/it.niedermann.owncloud.notes...
[3] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.aykit.MyOwnNotes/
I wish I could find a polished open source mind map tool.
I like DevonThink because it has good fuzzy searching. Good for finding articles that kept that kinda sorta has to do with the article you are currently writing.
https://www.devontechnologies.com/products/devonthink/overvi...
I understand when it started but why now it has to be a single page JS powered app which comes with so many restrictions.