Ideas can not always be represented well with just text; they seem to require at least the ability to create arbitrary arrangements of text and diagrams in two

Ideas can not always be represented well with just text; they seem to require at least the ability to create arbitrary arrangements of text and diagrams in two dimensions. That being said, many of my notes are done in vim with some unholy amalgamation of markdown and LaTeX. The tactile feel of a real pen on real paper is very nice, it makes note-taking a more pleasant experience. However, paper notes are difficult to index and amend, and easy to lose or damage, which is why I'm willing to compromise and take notes on computers. I think the ideal device for note taking would allow me to cohesively use some sort of stylus or touchscreen and a real hardware keyboard at the same time. Currently I use vim for some notes and a paper notebook for others; the most helpful thing note-taking software could do for me is allow me to seamlessly combine these two. So here are my notes about building a good note-taking program. The Bonus Points are the kinds of things that would get me to spend greater-than-pocketchange amounts of money on said program. * Make it easy and straightforward to input and format text with the keyboard * Make it easy and straightforward to draw diagrams and re-arrange text with the mouse/stylus/touchscreen * Run on my local machine. I don't stop coming up with ideas just because I don't have a network connection, and I don't stop needing access to my ideas when your company goes out of business. Syncing between computers is still important though, use Dropbox for that. Bonus points if you give me a daemon I can install on my server and sync everything through that. * On that note, use a highly portable native file format. I know I'll want to be able to review my ideas 5 or 10 years down the road, but I can't trust that your software will still be around. Plain-text is obviously the best in that regard, but some kind of archive format that includes plaintext and layout information would be more practical. Bonus points if you hack the file format however you need to so that if I open my notes in vim instead of your program, they still look as correct as possible, and if I save changes in vim they transfer sanely to your program. * Support LaTeX formulas or at least have very good handwriting transcription for formulas. If I were taking notes about the humanities, I'd certainly just use a text editor and be done with it. Bonus points if you do both seamlessly (so, I hand-write a formula, you transcribe it into the correct LaTeX and now it's there when I open the file in my text editor). * Huge bonus points: If I take pictures of (note that I did not say scan, I said take pictures of, as in with a webcam or cellphone) paper notes, your program imports them in a sane way (with handwriting and diagram recognition). * Have a very clean, minimal GUI that doesn't get in the way and makes normal use cases (text, simple diagrams, and formulas) Just Work. This is not a cloud "app", nor is it a social network, an email client, an IDE, a word processor, an address book, or a calendar. Focus taking and archiving notes well, at the expense of everything else, and I'll enjoy using your program.