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OpenNote – an open web-based alternative to Microsoft OneNote and EverNote
- dotemacs 13y agoGood, thanks. As somebody who uses SimpleNote I welcome competition to this area. Primarily because I've pleaded with SimpleNote crew to let me have documentation to their latest API as I maintain the simplenote.el, Emacs frontend for it. Only to be consistently ignored. Evernote already broke the access to their app via the existing Emacs mode. So any app eats into this market is welcome. Thanks again.
- Spearchucker 13y agoBeing web-based is a blocker for me. No offline with multi-device store-forward sync means any other merits become semantic. What I'd pay money for is OneNote with credible encryption.
- ozten 13y agoWhy compare this to OneNote? It doesn't seem to fit the same use cases as OneNote, which is optimized for pen based input.
- sibbl 13y agoBecause it seems like the developer never used it, otherwise he would not write thank Microsoft "For making terrible products" in the credits.
- smilekzs 13y agoExactly. OneNote is the only piece of software I've used that does stylus-based notetaking right. And Microsoft has been supporting this stuff all the way along, which means notes you take today won't be obsolete tomorrow.
- rrreese 13y agoI use OneNote extensively, on multiple devices, on a daily basis. I have never used pen input. I know many OneNote users. None use pen input.
- murrayb 13y agoI couldn't see from a scan through the docs- does any-one know if it does attachments?
- arethuza 13y agoI was pleased to see that you can copy and paste images into the text editor - so it can certainly handle image attachments. Dragging and dropping a file into the editor doesn't seem to work - the link is there when you save the note but the file doesn't seem to get uploaded.
- adamcooke 13y agoI hate to be negative about this but this certainly doesn't seem comparable to either OneNote or EverNote. Both of these products seem far superior to this.
- pweissbrod 13y ago+1 The credits on the site speak volumes about the author: "Microsoft - For making terrible products Evernote - For making better products in a slightly evil way" That is quite the snarky attitude towards predecessors. This project reads like someone wrote a vastly simplified version of onenote claiming its superiority. That's like taking CK Editor, putting it on a web page, backing it with a database and calling it a "replacement" for MS word and google docs because microsoft sucks and google is evil.
- smilekzs 13y agoSince someone already mentioned why it isn't an alternative to OneNote... What's obviously missing (compared to Evernote): 1. Web Clipper 2. Android support
- foz 13y agoI would love to see an EverNote/OneNote replacement that was based on the filesystem and git. In addition to a great web UI, any client could then access and edit notes via git. Sync could be provided with Github or your own repo. Maybe markdown + git + nice UI clients?
- arethuza 13y agoI think that's a great idea - I take it you mean a direct mapping of notes and attachments into some sensible directory structure?
- foz 13y agoYes, pretty much. Maybe it exists?
- arethuza 13y agoI'd love to know if it does - I can see that OneNote is pretty slick but I'd prefer something that has a nice UI (with notes, proper drawings, images and attachments) with a sane directory based storage format. NB I have tried Evernote but couldn't quite get into it - I make do with a combination of ever expanding Google Docs documents and text files open in whatever editor I'm using that week...
- hassy 13y agoI have some awful elisp code that glues together org mode, iimage.el and Deft to do something along these lines. All notes are stored as plain text with images in a sensible directory structure. I don't use git, everything just sits in a Dropbox folder. Emacs works well for me as the UI, but there's no reason a web-based UI couldn't be written. I could look into tidying it up over the Christmas break and publishing it if there's interest.
- austinbirch 13y agoI would be interested, though probably not so much in the web UI for it - Emacs would be fine.
- jamesu 13y agoFeels more like an Evernote clone to me, though it needs a lot of work. For instance when you load a note you need to click edit to enter editing mode which coming from Evernote feels very clunky. I'm also not sure why there needs to be a long fade-in for everything... one of the most important things for me in a note taking application is the ability to quickly create notes. Nitpicking aside, it's great to see more people trying to compete with Evernote. There seems to be a serious lack of note taking applications where I can simply take rich text, HTML, or images and place them in a note.
- csmuk 13y agoI can't draw on it.
- mrmondo 13y agoI'm a huge Evernote fan and I love the look of this, but MySQL - seriously?
- afandian 13y agoI don't like MySQL either. But it's probably the perfect choice. Or perhaps you think something webscale[1] is required? [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2F-DItXtZs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2F-DItXtZs
- mrmondo 13y agoI'm a fan of relational databases, just not MySQL. I've been administering MySQL, PostgreSQL and Oracle (not to mention a few others I'm too embarrassed to mention) for some time now and MySQL is a right pain in the ass. I'd rather see it use PostgreSQL. Love the video by the way! http://grimoire.ca/mysql/choose-something-else http://grimoire.ca/mysql/choose-something-else
- takluyver 13y agoIf you're running an instance for yourself, or only a few users, SQLite would seem like the obvious choice. That avoids the hassle of running a separate database server.
- neovive 13y agoThe project uses the PDO database abstraction library, so supporting other database back-ends in the future would not be a major task.
- greyman 13y agoI wonder if it is possible to create an "ultimate" notetaking application. What I found out is that whether it is "open" is not important to me, but the GUI is. For example, organizing notes in a folder tree doesn't work for me - I need to have them in a list, tagged and instantly searchable. So far, I settled with ResophNotes (and SimpleNote backend), since I found out that the speed of the New note dialog launch is of a great importance to me, and ResophNotes is instaneous, and generally very quick due to it's text-only nature.
- taude 13y agoThis is the route I go, I used RespohNotes on a Windows box and nvAlt on OSX. Global hot-key and I'm typing, either searching for an existing note, or creating a new one.
- Debugreality 13y agoThis is the approach I'm attempting to take with Cof8 - https://www.cof8.com/private https://www.cof8.com/private It's in beta at the moment but I've found tags and list work really well for super fast searching.
- llort 13y agoThe demo site is here: http://stardrive.us/OpenNote/ http://stardrive.us/OpenNote/ you can use this to login/password: crap/password
- elbeanio 13y agoIn the credits he calls Evernote "slightly evil", anyone know why?
- CodeWithCoffee 13y agoProbably because of the changes that they made to Skitch 2 - they removed loads of features (which have been slowly added back). http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/29802-i-advise-skitch-current-users-not-to-upgrade-to-20/ http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/29802-i-advise-skitch-c...
- FoxUSA 13y agoIts in my gut. For some reason I dont trust them. They have weird paid vs free rules. They control the data(You can get it out). OpenNote is designed to be a simple alternative. You control the data. You can see the code. Your information in your control. EverNote is not bad. However, in my gut I dont trust them. Plus it was time for an open source third alternative.
- jordigh 13y agoBy the way, note that if your app has a noncommercial restriction, it is no longer open source. That breaks part 1 of the definition: http://opensource.org/osd http://opensource.org/osd
- nandhp 13y agoAlso, Creative Commons explicitly states that their licenses "should not be used for software." http://wiki.creativecommons.org/FAQ#Can_I_use_a_Creative_Commons_license_for_software.3F http://wiki.creativecommons.org/FAQ#Can_I_use_a_Creative_Com...
- FreezerburnV 13y agoWhile I certainly appreciate the attempt to create more competition in this market, as well as adding an open-source competitor, it has a ways to go before it will actually be a competitor. And it doesn't have a few features that I find incredibly invaluable as an Evernote user: * Native UI and sync to every device under the sun. I have a Windows gaming desktop, a Macbook Air, iPad, and Windows Phone. Being able to access everything in Evernote across all devices is highly valuable to me. * Indexing of documents and text in images. I'm the kind of person who still keeps a paper journal and pen with him at almost all times, which is finally starting to be replaced because of Evernote. They have an app for writing on the iPad which syncs with their service, and they later index all of my handwriting so I can search it. That is one of the most valuable things to me, and any competitor would have to do as well or better for me to want to switch. * Hooks in with different types of apps. Such as Evernote Food. I love to cook and collect recipes, and I would need to be able to do something similar, easily, in any competitor. This also hooks in with the image text indexing, where I can take photos of recipes from my iPad and eventually I'll be able to search for the text in the recipe. * Web clipper. I cannot even begin to express how valuable this is. There have been multiple times where I was able to find something I clipped from a couple years ago that I desperately needed. Or a recipe that I clipped, which I now can't find via search engine but is comfortably nestled in Evernote. Don't take this as a downer comment. I love it when there is more competition, because it makes everyone step their game up. Meaning I get better quality of service, as well as everyone else who uses any of those services. It's a hard field you entered into, with a couple of great competitors. But keep up the hard work, and keep improving.
- fit2rule 13y agoIts open source, so all of the features can be added relatively painlessly.
- FreezerburnV 13y agoYes, they can be added. But it will be far from painless. And it will take a while. Even creating a UI for iOS that feels good and works well will take months. Especially because people have to donate time out of their busy lives to add to the project.
- rjcz 13y agoHas anyone noticed that the usage restriction: "This software(OpenNote) cannot be sold as a product, as a component, as a service, or in any other way unless a distribution license is purchased from the author(J. Liscom)" is incompatible with its (OpenNote) license (GPLv3)?
- jordigh 13y agoIt would be, but GPLv3 states, in section 7, paragraph 4: If the Program as you received it, or any part of it, contains a notice stating that it is governed by this License along with a term that is a further restriction, you may remove that term. So the author just didn't read GPLv3 and added meaningless additional restrictions.
- rjcz 13y agoThat is what I mean, basically :^)
- reidrac 13y agoThere's a bug report about this: https://github.com/FoxUSA/OpenNote/issues/7 https://github.com/FoxUSA/OpenNote/issues/7 Although it was opened 39 minutes ago :)
- jroseattle 13y agoIn the Credits section: Microsoft - For making terrible products Evernote - For making better products in a slightly evil way MSFT does make some lousy products, but OneNote seems decent enough. And Evernote is a commercial product, but I don't necessarily see it being evil. But those matters were obviously pain points for others.
- schuke 13y agoIt's not decent enough, it's truly awesome! In fact it's the only reason I am reluctant to switch to a Mac.
- zvrba 13y ago> web based alternative Well, that kills it for me. I have yet to see a web app whose latency desktop apps.
- pwnna 13y agoEver since I bought a Wacom tablet to take notes.. all of these apps do not beat xournal. Granted I cannot use it to take notes on my phone, I don't really need it as I can only take good notes with my Wacom tablet anyway.
- acjohnson55 13y agoI would love to see this support http://tent.io http://tent.io. I still need to look more deeply into the architecture of Tent, but from my cursory examination, it seems like a really ideal solution to the lack of cloud services that let users own their own data.
- ChrisArchitect 13y agonot as feature laden but I've been totally happy with Google Keep. On web and device. https://drive.google.com/keep/ https://drive.google.com/keep/
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- BUGHUNTER 13y agoSomebody has to say it, as a sacrifice for the HN crowd I take the role of the DB: It is unbelievable how many people that read "HN" - obviously considering themselves beeing "Hackers" - are not able to understand the basic requirements of a real hacker (TM) note taking app: - it has to be open source - you do not want to hand over your personal notes to some unknown company and their decision making process, maybe they will just disappear or not support their product anymore. - it has to have an open and good documented data format - you do not want your notes to disappear in an undocumented binary blob. - if there is any way to sync data with other instances / machines, the sync server of course has to be open sourced and available for usage on your own server. - of course some more functional things like versioning via git and it has to be lightning fast. This is for the "cool hackers" that are STILL using services like dropbox, evernote or onenote. Learn it: these services are for uneducated people who did not understand anything. Please do not hurt the eyes of HN readers with advertising these anti-privacy services here, thanks!