Show HN: Edna, note taking app for developers (edna.arslexis.io)

  git clone git@github.com:kjk/edna.git
  cd edna/server && go get && go build && cd ..
  ./server/server -build-local-prod
  ./server/server -run-local-prod

You can install a PWA shortcut which gives you even more desktop experience in the sense that it looks like an app separate from the browser.

That is what I do.

What are those corporate rules and how are they enforced?

Is it about storing data? Because Edna stores the notes on your computer, it's never sent to any server.

To add another one, you need to find library that implements CodeMirror mode for that language, add it to package.json and update languages.js

One of the default notes is `scratch` for exactly that and you can summon it quickly with `Alt + 1`

If you have something you want to write down to be able to reference in the future, create a note and put that in it. The next time you want to write something down, you can either put it in the note you already created, or you can make another note if that sounds nicer. Up to you. You'll find out what works.

You can do basically what you're doing right now, which is opening a random file and putting it in there, except now instead of your files being spread across your system they're all in one place, and if you want to start doing fancier stuff with them in the future you can. I use a small percentage of Obsidian's features, and they don't get in my way if I'm not using them.

I've been thinking about making math an option within markdown.

The type of the block is shown at the bottom, in the status bar.

You can see implementation: https://github.com/kjk/edna/blob/main/src/editor/emacs.js

I can't say how well it works. I just noticed that I would need to change some keybindings because they conflict with Emacs keybindings.

Which I respect but I needed at least multiple notes, bringing this much closer to apps like Obsidian, Bear etc.

And then I added a bunch of features that I wanted to have, like UI for opening/creating/deleting nots inspired by Notational Velocity, encryption, command palette, history, Ctrl + B for navigating between blocks.

Edna is basically a superset of Heynote: it does everything Heynote does and lots more.

So yeah, the vision is pretty different.

I should add offline mode.

If you need some specific PWA functionality that isn't there, please open an issue at https://github.com/kjk/edna/issues

Further, because I don't type in QWERTY, I noticed that _some_ shortcuts seem correctly mapped in my layout, but others are not. The Option+N shortcut for a new note just starts the "˜" combining character (expecting a following character like "n" to form "ñ") when using the "n" key in my layout. However it works if I use the physical "n" key (which is my "k").

I feel like that explanation is pretty poor, but yeah basically some shortcuts seem bound to the physical key location whereas others seem bound to the mapped key. I wonder if they are declared differently?

Ctrl + K was actually the first. Ctrl + O because it's naturally "open". And you can switch to command palette with `>`, like in vs code.

I've added Ctrl + P and made it the documented one because I also use VS Code heavily and I was tired of context switching.

It's unfortunate that it conflicts with browser's Print but I figured that you do this often and print rarely.

The ultimate solution, of course, is to allow customizing keybindings.

    - autocomplete for note name when `[`
    - if there's note `foo` and `[foo]` in markdown block, Ctrl + click could open to that note

1. https://notational.net

A relatively simple thing would be to add "preview block" which e.g. for mermaid blocks would add a panel with rendered diagram.

A much more complicated solution would be to add codemirror view which renders diagram when cursor is outside the markup and switches to editing when inside markup.

But that's significantly more complicated.

Or: context menu (right click), Block / Change Language.

Or: command palette, "Block: Change Language" command.

Earlier I also made a fork of silverbullet: https://notedapp.dev/ with similar goals to Edna (which is a fork of heynote).

But don't use it. I stopped working on it half-way. In retrospect, I've made a mistake there of doing my note storage backend.

Then I was thinking about re-starting it and re-doing the backend for notedapp but then I saw heynote and used that as a based and I'm quite happy with the result.

I do like SilverBullet so it's a possibility that I'll do another project which combines the UX ideas of Edna with SilverBullet editing UI. But for now I still have some ideas for Edna, will keep me busy for at least a week :)

You can then access the note on every computer where you replicate that folder.

This doesn't cover accessing from mobile or computers you don't own but it's just a different kind of a problem of auth.

Edna is actually a self-contained go binary that you could run yourself on a server or your desktop.

Currently the backend (Go server) is there to just serve HTTP files but it wouldn't be hard to add storage API to Go server and modify Edna to use that. I already have 2 storage backends: local storage and file system api.

I would say it would be at most a few days of work to make it work similarly to SB but that's not something I plan right now. I still have some UI functionality to add to Edna and then we'll see.

Executing JavaScript safely is actually hard. You don't want to just execute code in browser context because then an attacker could trick you to execute his JavaScript code and e.g. grab all your notes.

So you need to sandbox it via e.g. iframe or by running using wasm-compiled quickjs

Which is something I might do.

Additionally I'm thinking about allowing to run a javascript function over content of a block so e.g. you could base64-encode a text block etc.

How would that experience look like? (I think I'm after the same thing!)

Desktop only (Mac currently) though, with windows on the way. Most likely will never have a web version.

Source: Me who built it