5 ms·

It amazed me that after almost 3 decades we still don't have "the way" to take notes on computer. Evernote came close to it for me before they mess their UI. N

It amazed me that after almost 3 decades we still don't have "the way" to take notes on computer. Evernote came close to it for me before they mess their UI. Native Notes on iOS and on Mac is pretty straightforward but misses search features and is.. ugly. Ending up with several .txt files a little like OP organized in folders is also nice as it should survived most of potential future changes in term of everything and allows you to whichever editor but seems inefficient.

powersnail 6y ago
Note taking is a broad term for recording thoughts and information; the requirement is difficult to define, and fairly fluid. We've had pens and paper since ancient times, and people are still inventing new ways of organizing their notebooks. I think "the way" might never come.
bobbylarrybobby 6y ago
The issue is how you define what a note even is. Some people say it’s just plain text; some demand support for images; some want to attach arbitrary files; some want rich text/markup, and some demand markdown specifically while others don’t care about the underlying format; some want simple tables, while others want full databases in their notes; some want to organize with folder and tags, while some just want tags, while some just want folders, while some want notes to live inside other notes. With so many definitions of what a “note” is even supposed to be, it’s no surprise that we haven’t settled on a single way to create and edit them.
- hartator 6y ago
  Totally true. I've ended up a mix between ReMarkable 2 e-ink tablet for meetings notes, Apple Notes for things like grocery lists, and regular folders on a cloud for long term archiving and references.
  - Mister_X 6y ago
    OT, but I've had a MobiScribe e-Ink tablet for almost a couple of years now, I use it daily for notes and diagrams, fantastic tool, but that ReMarkable 2 e-ink tablet looks worthy of a closer look, Thanks! Oops, just checked, mine has a backlight, and the ReMarkable is even more Closed than my MobiScribe, fail.
    - xyquadrat 6y ago
      I'm not sure what you mean by > the ReMarkable is even more Closed than my MobiScribe, fail. The ReMarkable is comparatively very hackable and open, see for example https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable/ https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable/. It doesn't have a backlight though, that's true.
    - robinsoh 6y ago
      > Oops, just checked, mine has a backlight, and the ReMarkable is even more Closed than my MobiScribe, fail. Are you certain about this? I was told that remarkable is open source. But I have not verified this myself. But I see tools like https://github.com/torwag/remarkableflash https://github.com/torwag/remarkableflash which suggest it is possible to recompile what software remarkable has published and then flash it on to the system. Please double check either way.
    - hartator 6y ago
      The ReMarkable is pretty open, you can ssh on it without mod! Their CTO is a former KDE developer or something in the like I believe. Overall, ReMarkable 1 and 2 are pretty awesome. It's a cool tool to take ton of notes without having to worry about loosing anything. Just wish their search feature was OCR. This is truly missing.
  - johntash 6y ago
    What do you think of the ReMarkable 2? It looks really interesting, but for the price tag I would be scared I won't use it enough. Do you ever share notes you make with it or are they purely for your own reference?
    - hartator 6y ago
      Mostly my own reference, I did share .png of some mockups to our front end designer. That was cool I suppose!
ransom_rs 6y ago
Granted, after centuries of written works, we still don't have "the way" to take hand written notes. Everyones brain works different, and people have total different ways to take notes. I don't think this is 100% of the reason computers don't have a universal note taking system, but it is definitely a part of it.
vincentmarle 6y ago
"The way" is of course Notational Velocity: https://notational.net https://notational.net
- AdamGibbins 6y ago
  That's been dead for years, replaced with https://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/ https://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/ which is replaced with https://nvultra.com/ https://nvultra.com/
  - anaerobicover 6y ago
    Also worth checking out is The Archive. There are some differences, but I've been very happy with it as a successor. https://zettelkasten.de/the-archive/ https://zettelkasten.de/the-archive/
    - codpiece 6y ago
      The Archive is great! NValt is also wonderful. I use Archive for a true Zettelkasten and nValt for meeting notes.
  - pjot 6y ago
    nvUltra is still in beta. nvALT still works (Big Sur too) but hasn't been actively maintained. I've been experimenting with FSnotes[0] lately and find it be be the closest an app has come to the simplicity of nvALT [0]: https://github.com/glushchenko/fsnotes https://github.com/glushchenko/fsnotes
  - radiospiel 6y ago
    Nvultra, on the other hand, is „coming soon“ for two years now. nothing to see there yet I guess
rojobuffalo 6y ago
i'm very fond of iOS/macOS Notes app. i use it heavily every day. one breakthrough for me was to stop trying to organize. i just write everything down in bulleted lists. and i create a note for each day with the date at the top, ex. 2021-2-22, which helps when scanning the list of notes. if i have something coming up that i want to prepare for i just create that note in advance, with the upcoming date at the top. i find the search feature works well, except i have had an occasion where it stopped looking further back in time for some reason. that was actually pretty frustrating to discover. why is it ugly? i think it looks good from the minimalist perspective. the one thing that would make me happier is if i could run it vim or have a subset of vim keybindings
- vardaro 6y ago
  I agree. I prefer an app I can jot down plain text. I don't want to write Markdown.
jascii 6y ago
Well, after over 20.000 years we don't really have a "the way" of taking notes on paper either... Note taking styles tend to be highly dependent on context and personal style...
- treeman79 6y ago
  My daughter took a class on note taking. It was such an eye opener for me. Others had organized notes, but I had no idea how they did that.
evad3r 6y ago
I still think Evernote is somewhat the closest, though I agree their recent attempts at revamping the UI have left a bitter taste in people's mouths. I don't mind the new iOS app so much UI wise, though its performance has gone to the dogs (recent issue for example was me trying to write a note in an underground car park with no signal - and it just would not load the note composer at all!) The Windows app at least has dark mode now, though it's stuck in a weird hybrid of "classic Windows UI" versus "modern UI"
codpiece 6y ago
If you really want a mindblowing take on notes, try Eastgate Tinderbox. http://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/ http://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/ Sadly, they really don't do a good job explaining the program, but it hearkens back to the early days of hypertext theory.
perryizgr8 6y ago
My favorite note-taking setup is a portable version of Notepad++ saved to my Dropbox folder. Portable, auto-saving, fast, fully-searchable. So amazing. Only problem is that I don't have a Windows computer anymore so I can't use Notepad++ anymore and I haven't seen anything come close to it on Macos.
xtiansimon 6y ago
“ ...we still don't have "the way" to take notes on computer.” What about paper? Haha. Non standard notebook sizes. Post it, tear out, sewn-bound, spiral, 3x5, 4x6, single sided, double sided, pencil, fountain pen, roller ball, blue ink, black ink, colored pens, highlighter... Back in the day a prof. Of mine blew my mind with the question—why do we need specialized software at all? Why not create generic app-components? Pen, compass, paper/document first? Just like real life? My Sony DPT-RP1 gets somewhat close to that idea.

powersnail 6y ago

Note taking is a broad term for recording thoughts and information; the requirement is difficult to define, and fairly fluid. We've had pens and paper since ancient times, and people are still inventing new ways of organizing their notebooks. I think "the way" might never come.

bobbylarrybobby 6y ago

The issue is how you define what a note even is. Some people say it’s just plain text; some demand support for images; some want to attach arbitrary files; some want rich text/markup, and some demand markdown specifically while others don’t care about the underlying format; some want simple tables, while others want full databases in their notes; some want to organize with folder and tags, while some just want tags, while some just want folders, while some want notes to live inside other notes. With so many definitions of what a “note” is even supposed to be, it’s no surprise that we haven’t settled on a single way to create and edit them.

hartator 6y ago
Totally true. I've ended up a mix between ReMarkable 2 e-ink tablet for meetings notes, Apple Notes for things like grocery lists, and regular folders on a cloud for long term archiving and references.
- Mister_X 6y ago
  OT, but I've had a MobiScribe e-Ink tablet for almost a couple of years now, I use it daily for notes and diagrams, fantastic tool, but that ReMarkable 2 e-ink tablet looks worthy of a closer look, Thanks! Oops, just checked, mine has a backlight, and the ReMarkable is even more Closed than my MobiScribe, fail.
  - xyquadrat 6y ago
    I'm not sure what you mean by > the ReMarkable is even more Closed than my MobiScribe, fail. The ReMarkable is comparatively very hackable and open, see for example https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable/ https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable/. It doesn't have a backlight though, that's true.
  - robinsoh 6y ago
    > Oops, just checked, mine has a backlight, and the ReMarkable is even more Closed than my MobiScribe, fail. Are you certain about this? I was told that remarkable is open source. But I have not verified this myself. But I see tools like https://github.com/torwag/remarkableflash https://github.com/torwag/remarkableflash which suggest it is possible to recompile what software remarkable has published and then flash it on to the system. Please double check either way.
  - hartator 6y ago
    The ReMarkable is pretty open, you can ssh on it without mod! Their CTO is a former KDE developer or something in the like I believe. Overall, ReMarkable 1 and 2 are pretty awesome. It's a cool tool to take ton of notes without having to worry about loosing anything. Just wish their search feature was OCR. This is truly missing.
- johntash 6y ago
  What do you think of the ReMarkable 2? It looks really interesting, but for the price tag I would be scared I won't use it enough. Do you ever share notes you make with it or are they purely for your own reference?
  - hartator 6y ago
    Mostly my own reference, I did share .png of some mockups to our front end designer. That was cool I suppose!

ransom_rs 6y ago

Granted, after centuries of written works, we still don't have "the way" to take hand written notes. Everyones brain works different, and people have total different ways to take notes. I don't think this is 100% of the reason computers don't have a universal note taking system, but it is definitely a part of it.

vincentmarle 6y ago

"The way" is of course Notational Velocity: https://notational.net https://notational.net

AdamGibbins 6y ago
That's been dead for years, replaced with https://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/ https://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/ which is replaced with https://nvultra.com/ https://nvultra.com/
- anaerobicover 6y ago
  Also worth checking out is The Archive. There are some differences, but I've been very happy with it as a successor. https://zettelkasten.de/the-archive/ https://zettelkasten.de/the-archive/
  - codpiece 6y ago
    The Archive is great! NValt is also wonderful. I use Archive for a true Zettelkasten and nValt for meeting notes.
- pjot 6y ago
  nvUltra is still in beta. nvALT still works (Big Sur too) but hasn't been actively maintained. I've been experimenting with FSnotes[0] lately and find it be be the closest an app has come to the simplicity of nvALT [0]: https://github.com/glushchenko/fsnotes https://github.com/glushchenko/fsnotes
- radiospiel 6y ago
  Nvultra, on the other hand, is „coming soon“ for two years now. nothing to see there yet I guess

rojobuffalo 6y ago

i'm very fond of iOS/macOS Notes app. i use it heavily every day. one breakthrough for me was to stop trying to organize. i just write everything down in bulleted lists. and i create a note for each day with the date at the top, ex. 2021-2-22, which helps when scanning the list of notes. if i have something coming up that i want to prepare for i just create that note in advance, with the upcoming date at the top. i find the search feature works well, except i have had an occasion where it stopped looking further back in time for some reason. that was actually pretty frustrating to discover. why is it ugly? i think it looks good from the minimalist perspective. the one thing that would make me happier is if i could run it vim or have a subset of vim keybindings

vardaro 6y ago
I agree. I prefer an app I can jot down plain text. I don't want to write Markdown.

jascii 6y ago

Well, after over 20.000 years we don't really have a "the way" of taking notes on paper either... Note taking styles tend to be highly dependent on context and personal style...

treeman79 6y ago
My daughter took a class on note taking. It was such an eye opener for me. Others had organized notes, but I had no idea how they did that.

evad3r 6y ago

I still think Evernote is somewhat the closest, though I agree their recent attempts at revamping the UI have left a bitter taste in people's mouths. I don't mind the new iOS app so much UI wise, though its performance has gone to the dogs (recent issue for example was me trying to write a note in an underground car park with no signal - and it just would not load the note composer at all!) The Windows app at least has dark mode now, though it's stuck in a weird hybrid of "classic Windows UI" versus "modern UI"

codpiece 6y ago

If you really want a mindblowing take on notes, try Eastgate Tinderbox. http://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/ http://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/ Sadly, they really don't do a good job explaining the program, but it hearkens back to the early days of hypertext theory.

perryizgr8 6y ago

My favorite note-taking setup is a portable version of Notepad++ saved to my Dropbox folder. Portable, auto-saving, fast, fully-searchable. So amazing. Only problem is that I don't have a Windows computer anymore so I can't use Notepad++ anymore and I haven't seen anything come close to it on Macos.

xtiansimon 6y ago

“ ...we still don't have "the way" to take notes on computer.” What about paper? Haha. Non standard notebook sizes. Post it, tear out, sewn-bound, spiral, 3x5, 4x6, single sided, double sided, pencil, fountain pen, roller ball, blue ink, black ink, colored pens, highlighter... Back in the day a prof. Of mine blew my mind with the question—why do we need specialized software at all? Why not create generic app-components? Pen, compass, paper/document first? Just like real life? My Sony DPT-RP1 gets somewhat close to that idea.