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Shout out to https://joplinapp.org/ https://joplinapp.org/ I was an Evernote user when I was on macOS. When I switched to Linux, a proper web clipper was somet

Shout out to https://joplinapp.org/ https://joplinapp.org/ I was an Evernote user when I was on macOS. When I switched to Linux, a proper web clipper was something I really missed. I'm now on Joplin and it does everything I used to use Evernote for and then some. It even has vim bindings now! As far as longevity goes, I think they got their archive / backup format right - it's just a tarball with markdown in it.

dragonsh 7y ago
No need of proprietary code and apps why not build it into browsers. I have seen Firefox and Chrome can download web pages. So it will be nicer if they can download the bookmarked pages and store in a local html, css, image folder. I think it's pretty easy to achieve. Also people need to move away from those esoteric reactjs, angular, vuejs and plethora of CMS as API or static site generators relying on some js framework which won't last even 2-3 years. Use a static site generator which can generate a plain html, like static site generators built on pandoc, python docutils or similar. Personally I like restructuredText as the preferred format for content as its a complete specification and plain text. So the only thing in this article I will change is that content can also be in rst format and then generate html from it. Markdown is not a specification as each site implements their own markdown directives unlike restructuredtext specification and most of the parsers and tooling are little different from each other.
- celeritascelery 7y ago
  Joplin is open source.
- dbtx 7y ago
  > Markdown is not a specification Not by that name... https://commonmark.org/ https://commonmark.org/
  - dragonsh 7y ago
    It is stil not a specification like restructuredText[1]. Also wikiMarkup (which really started this markdown) is different from GitHub markdown, which is different from other markdown editors. Also many sites use their own markdown versions. If you are in restructuredText world there is one specification and all implementation adhere to it, be it pandoc, sphinx, pelican, nikola. The beauty of it is that it has extension mechanisms which provides enough room for each tool to develop it. But markup can be parsed by any tool. [1] https://docutils.sourceforge.io/docs/ref/rst/restructuredtext.html https://docutils.sourceforge.io/docs/ref/rst/restructuredtex...
    - m463 7y ago
      I don't know why markdown is so popular other than maybe "it was easy to get running" or "works for me". It's better than "designed by a committee" standards, but it lacks elegance or maybe craftsmanship.
      - setr 7y ago
        Because its inherently appealing, close to what you wanted intuitively, and if you're only dealing with a single implementation of it, works fairly well. You don't really get bit by its lack of a standard and extensibility until after you've bought in. It's essentially designed by the opposite of a committee -- rather than including everything but the kitchen-sink, it contains support for almost no usecases except the one. Which is very appealing, when you only have the one usecase.
        dragonsh 7y ago
        Well rst is better than markdown from day one. The only reason it became famous is thanks to wikimarkup. So markdown needs to thank the popularity of Wikipedia for its success, as rst did not have any application like Wikipedia. But still rst is used widely enough with its killer Sphinx, readthedocs and now its kind of de-facto documentation writing markup in Python and many open source software world.
        petepete 7y ago
- eitland 7y ago
  > No need of proprietary code and apps Joplin is free and open source.
- anyzen 7y ago
  > Personally I like restructuredText as the preferred format for content as its a complete specification and plain text. I have used rst intensively on a project. A few years later, I would be hard pressed to write anything in ti and would need to start with a Quick Start tutorial. With all its faults, Markdown is simple enough that it can be (and is) used anywhere, so there is no danger of me forgetting its syntax (even if it wasn't much simpler to star with). So personally I would prefer md over rst anytime.
- pinehqcom 7y ago
  This... I just found a plugin for the static site generator Pelican that is 7 years old that still works. After running Pelican you get plain HTML that can be hosted anywhere. I like Netlify, but other options like GitHub pages are also great. The author recommends not putting on GitHub Pages because they haven't found a working business model and might not be here in the future. But... GitHub has been taken over by Microsoft which is most likely not going bankrupt soon and Microsoft loves their backward compatibility so I am confident they won't screw GitHub up too much.
  - dragonsh 7y ago
    You can say the same about geocities when it was acquired by yahoo. But it didn't last and then now it's happening with yahoo-groups. So I am not hopeful if GitHub becomes a liability microsoft will keep it.
    - freetonik 7y ago
      Yahoo! And Microsoft have very different business models. One is intently more sustainable (selling software and services).
- charlesdaniels 7y ago
  > No need of proprietary code and apps Joplin is open source, which is a big part of the sell to me. It definitely isn't the best of all possible note taking systems that could ever exist, but it's the best open source one I've found so far, and I don't have time to write a better one at the moment. > why not build it into browsers. I have seen Firefox and Chrome can download web pages. So it will be nicer if they can download the bookmarked pages and store in a local html, css, image folder. I think it's pretty easy to achieve This is solving a different problem though. WARC/MHT and other solutions can do this. Joplin is more of a note taking system that allows ingesting content from the web into one's own local notebook, which is relevant to what the GP post was talking about - Evernote. However, it would seem that "the modern web" is the now popular standard. 10 years ago it might have been Flash or Java web applets or whatever. Now it's JS. I'm not convinced that JS is any better than what it has replaced. However, people keep paying developers to write them, so presumably someone likes them. > Also people need to move away from those esoteric reactjs, angular, vuejs and plethora of CMS as API or static site generators relying on some js framework which won't last even 2-3 years. Use a static site generator which can generate a plain html, like static site generators built on pandoc, python docutils or similar. Agreed, but that's also not a problem that Joplin, Evernote, or any other such tool is going to be able to solve. Unless you are complaining that Joplin is an Electron app? That's my biggest issue with it personally. It runs well enough, but is definitely the heaviest application I use regularly, which is a little sad for a note taking program. On the other hand, I haven't found a better open source replacement for _Evernote_. There are lots of other open source note-taking programs though. > Personally I like restructuredText as the preferred format for content as its a complete specification and plain text. So the only thing in this article I will change is that content can also be in rst format and then generate html from it. Markdown is not a specification as each site implements their own markdown directives unlike restructuredtext specification and most of the parsers and tooling are little different from each other. reST is indeed very nice. At one point, I kept my personal notes as a Sphinx wiki with everything stored in reST. I found this to be less ergonomic than Evernote/Joplin, although in principle it could do all the same things that Joplin can do, and then some.
- techslave 7y ago
  > No need of proprietary code and apps why not build it into browsers. Safari does this. pages added to the reading list archive the content for offline reading.
m-p-3 7y ago
The developer behind it is doing some awesome stuff so I decided to sponsor him on GitHub.
q-base 7y ago
Thanks a lot for the recommendation! I have been a little annoyed with Evernote not having an app for Ubuntu, which I recently started using quite heavily. So this looks very interesting!

dragonsh 7y ago

No need of proprietary code and apps why not build it into browsers. I have seen Firefox and Chrome can download web pages. So it will be nicer if they can download the bookmarked pages and store in a local html, css, image folder. I think it's pretty easy to achieve. Also people need to move away from those esoteric reactjs, angular, vuejs and plethora of CMS as API or static site generators relying on some js framework which won't last even 2-3 years. Use a static site generator which can generate a plain html, like static site generators built on pandoc, python docutils or similar. Personally I like restructuredText as the preferred format for content as its a complete specification and plain text. So the only thing in this article I will change is that content can also be in rst format and then generate html from it. Markdown is not a specification as each site implements their own markdown directives unlike restructuredtext specification and most of the parsers and tooling are little different from each other.

celeritascelery 7y ago
Joplin is open source.
dbtx 7y ago
> Markdown is not a specification Not by that name... https://commonmark.org/ https://commonmark.org/
- dragonsh 7y ago
  It is stil not a specification like restructuredText[1]. Also wikiMarkup (which really started this markdown) is different from GitHub markdown, which is different from other markdown editors. Also many sites use their own markdown versions. If you are in restructuredText world there is one specification and all implementation adhere to it, be it pandoc, sphinx, pelican, nikola. The beauty of it is that it has extension mechanisms which provides enough room for each tool to develop it. But markup can be parsed by any tool. [1] https://docutils.sourceforge.io/docs/ref/rst/restructuredtext.html https://docutils.sourceforge.io/docs/ref/rst/restructuredtex...
  - m463 7y ago
    I don't know why markdown is so popular other than maybe "it was easy to get running" or "works for me". It's better than "designed by a committee" standards, but it lacks elegance or maybe craftsmanship.
    - setr 7y ago
      Because its inherently appealing, close to what you wanted intuitively, and if you're only dealing with a single implementation of it, works fairly well. You don't really get bit by its lack of a standard and extensibility until after you've bought in. It's essentially designed by the opposite of a committee -- rather than including everything but the kitchen-sink, it contains support for almost no usecases except the one. Which is very appealing, when you only have the one usecase.
      - dragonsh 7y ago
        Well rst is better than markdown from day one. The only reason it became famous is thanks to wikimarkup. So markdown needs to thank the popularity of Wikipedia for its success, as rst did not have any application like Wikipedia. But still rst is used widely enough with its killer Sphinx, readthedocs and now its kind of de-facto documentation writing markup in Python and many open source software world.
      - petepete 7y ago
eitland 7y ago
> No need of proprietary code and apps Joplin is free and open source.
anyzen 7y ago
> Personally I like restructuredText as the preferred format for content as its a complete specification and plain text. I have used rst intensively on a project. A few years later, I would be hard pressed to write anything in ti and would need to start with a Quick Start tutorial. With all its faults, Markdown is simple enough that it can be (and is) used anywhere, so there is no danger of me forgetting its syntax (even if it wasn't much simpler to star with). So personally I would prefer md over rst anytime.
pinehqcom 7y ago
This... I just found a plugin for the static site generator Pelican that is 7 years old that still works. After running Pelican you get plain HTML that can be hosted anywhere. I like Netlify, but other options like GitHub pages are also great. The author recommends not putting on GitHub Pages because they haven't found a working business model and might not be here in the future. But... GitHub has been taken over by Microsoft which is most likely not going bankrupt soon and Microsoft loves their backward compatibility so I am confident they won't screw GitHub up too much.
- dragonsh 7y ago
  You can say the same about geocities when it was acquired by yahoo. But it didn't last and then now it's happening with yahoo-groups. So I am not hopeful if GitHub becomes a liability microsoft will keep it.
  - freetonik 7y ago
    Yahoo! And Microsoft have very different business models. One is intently more sustainable (selling software and services).
charlesdaniels 7y ago
> No need of proprietary code and apps Joplin is open source, which is a big part of the sell to me. It definitely isn't the best of all possible note taking systems that could ever exist, but it's the best open source one I've found so far, and I don't have time to write a better one at the moment. > why not build it into browsers. I have seen Firefox and Chrome can download web pages. So it will be nicer if they can download the bookmarked pages and store in a local html, css, image folder. I think it's pretty easy to achieve This is solving a different problem though. WARC/MHT and other solutions can do this. Joplin is more of a note taking system that allows ingesting content from the web into one's own local notebook, which is relevant to what the GP post was talking about - Evernote. However, it would seem that "the modern web" is the now popular standard. 10 years ago it might have been Flash or Java web applets or whatever. Now it's JS. I'm not convinced that JS is any better than what it has replaced. However, people keep paying developers to write them, so presumably someone likes them. > Also people need to move away from those esoteric reactjs, angular, vuejs and plethora of CMS as API or static site generators relying on some js framework which won't last even 2-3 years. Use a static site generator which can generate a plain html, like static site generators built on pandoc, python docutils or similar. Agreed, but that's also not a problem that Joplin, Evernote, or any other such tool is going to be able to solve. Unless you are complaining that Joplin is an Electron app? That's my biggest issue with it personally. It runs well enough, but is definitely the heaviest application I use regularly, which is a little sad for a note taking program. On the other hand, I haven't found a better open source replacement for _Evernote_. There are lots of other open source note-taking programs though. > Personally I like restructuredText as the preferred format for content as its a complete specification and plain text. So the only thing in this article I will change is that content can also be in rst format and then generate html from it. Markdown is not a specification as each site implements their own markdown directives unlike restructuredtext specification and most of the parsers and tooling are little different from each other. reST is indeed very nice. At one point, I kept my personal notes as a Sphinx wiki with everything stored in reST. I found this to be less ergonomic than Evernote/Joplin, although in principle it could do all the same things that Joplin can do, and then some.
techslave 7y ago
> No need of proprietary code and apps why not build it into browsers. Safari does this. pages added to the reading list archive the content for offline reading.

m-p-3 7y ago

The developer behind it is doing some awesome stuff so I decided to sponsor him on GitHub.

q-base 7y ago

Thanks a lot for the recommendation! I have been a little annoyed with Evernote not having an app for Ubuntu, which I recently started using quite heavily. So this looks very interesting!