[ファブリス]

Let's have a thread for note taking apps.

I came accross this one recently, for OS X:

Notational Velocity
http://notational.net/

It's like Spotlight search out of a custom folder. It can save your notes as separate texte files or one database.

Tried it but I feel limited by the editing capabilities.

MacVIM
For notes I'm using MacVim + FuzzyFinder plugin. Vim loads blazingly fast so load time is not an issue. I press CTRL-J and a spotlight-like search comes down (albeit in oldschool TRS-80 text mode . I configured it so that typing "f:" goes to my general notes. "r:" goes to my RevTK code repository. For example I type f:git and enter to get my Git cheatsheet notes.

I store the notes in a local folder, but I have a backup script that zip it up and send it to DropBox.

For encryption I use a simple feature of Vim. When I load my passwords file it prompts for a key. The encryption is breakable of course, but then I don't work for the CIA. Meaning, it's good enough.


What app(s) do you use for note taking?

Evernote does sync with web, supports multiple platforms, integrates with your browser and lets you share stuff like pictures etc.

Oh and it handles Japanese just fine in notes and even tries to recognize it from images (didn't test it yet).

What a coincidence, I just started testing Notational Velocity today.

I've tried most Mac note-taking apps in the past, for various reasons I dislike almost all of them. Today I've been trying Notational Velocity and also NoteBook by Circus Ponies.

My purpose today is to begin learning two new textbooks, one biochemistry and one organic chemistry. I always spend so long thinking about how to organise my notes before I start making them! Today is no different, and I'm leaning strongly towards a return to Tomboy for note-taking and possibly using NoteBook for paper writing (organisational stage) with LaTeX of course for final production of a paper.

Here are some reviews of things I've tried in the past:

DevonThink
Devon Technologies' DevonThink is a really quite advanced note-taking and information organisation software. It essentially creates a database in a proprietary format, within which you can store files of any kind and various types of notes. You can directly edit text files and a few kinds of data tables directly in the software. You can also view loads of file formats in there, including all office documents, videos, images of most formats, sound etc.

One nice feature (not exclusive to this software) is that you can take notes in rich text, and add recorded audio (great for lectures) directly into the lines of your notes, as well as dropping media into the document. However, this is available in loads of less complicated software. The complexity and huge overheads of this program by far outweigh the benefits, and after trying it out for around 3 months I eventually ditched it in favour of using finder and spotlight to organise files.

Tomboy Notes
Tomboy for Mac was my first choice of note-taking software when I came from linux to mac earlier this year. In linux Tomboy was great, very simple searching and easy to organise files heirarchically. The rich-media capabilities are limited. I was enticed away from Tomboy by the shininess of native mac apps, but I may well go back to it. I had my best ever exam success by note-taking in tomboy, then re-reading notes and ankifying facts.

I think the nicest features of Tomboy are the simple wiki-style organisation and the lightweight nature of it. You can also sync easily with a variety of open-format services (like WebDAV) or simply by dragging the notes folder around (making it DropBox compatible).

Scrivener
Literature and Latte's Scrivener is mostly gear towards play and novel writing. It's a really shiny graphical app, and has some cool ways of rearranging chunks of information. I tried it for paper-writing, but in the end I just got pissed off with how stupidly graphical it is, I felt like I was being babied through it. Also there's no capability for citation or reference management, so it isn't much use in the sciences.

Evernote
Evernote is well-known and apparently popular, although I personally don't get it. It doesn't offer much new, except the proprietary sync, and I really don't find the interface very nice to use. I guess if you are trying to just collect a bunch of random thoughts and junk together, it would be fine. It has iPhone/iPad apps too, so you can access it anywhere. This really isn't what I'm looking for though, I want something where the interface gets out of my way and lets me focus on the information - this seems to be the opposite of the Evernote philosophy.

Notational Velocity
This looks nice - similar to Tomboy but only for snippet notes. I can imagine this will be useful later in different situations to mine, where there are loads of tidbits of information you might need access to later, but where there is no effective way to structure all the information. In this scenario, a fast search is the best option. But, as ファブリス said, the editing capabilities are really poor.

NoteBook
Circus Ponies' Notebook looks mediocre for note-taking, but it does look promising for essay and paper writing. It has a whole range of organisational options, with automatic indexing (called the 'multidex') of different types of info in your document.

My ideal paper writing software would be very similar to LyX but would also allow rearranging of the contents by dragging items around the table of contents.

edit: I just installed Tomboy and realised why I stopped using it on Mac - because the Mac version is all wrapped up in Mono it doesn't use a native interface or any native commands. You also can't type in Japanese. So, that's out the window. Does anyone know a good personal wiki for OSX? I've tried tiddlywiki - it's too tiddly.

[ファブリス]

Wow, nice post. I think this could have been posted in Learning Resources after all. *moves topic*

TaskPaper
TaskPaper is an interesting app for OS X. It uses a simple plain text format to identify sections and lists of items. For example you can type "- something" (dash something), and the dash will turn into a little box that you can check.

What I liked about it was that it uses a simple plain text format, similarly to Markdown. So you don't need to export; and you can open the text files in another text editor.

I also felt limited in TaskPaper but was inspired by it and tweaked a TaskPaper plugin for Vim. When I work on the site now I often have checklists using identation to break down tasks into smaller tasks. If I hit CTRL-D it will toggle a @done tag at the end of the line, which by way of the syntax file, turns it to green (in TaskPaper the checked item uses "strike-through" style).



Another reason I like Vim is that it can be used almost like a Wiki. For example this simple macro will open the filename under the cursor in a new tab:

" Open filename under cursor in a new tab
map <F5> <c-w>gf

OK so today I frantically searched through all the available note taking apps which aren't in the list above (for Mac). I really wanted something like Tomboy or Vim, but OSX native.

There are a bunch which are sort of feature rich, but basically just too plastic and graphical and their interface really gets in the way. This is usually because they have a stupid pane view and no Wiki capabilities, such as:
- Yojimbo
- Thoughts
- SOHO Notes
- Caboodle
- Together

Then there are a few more like Notational Velocity which are very minimalistic and really suited to unorganised snippets:
- Shovebox
- Spark

So then if you ignore the open source apps which are way out of date and no longer maintained, there are really only two choices:

VoodooPad
Flying Meat's VoodooPad is the closest to what I've been searching for:
- It's a personal wiki but coded as a Cocoa (Mac native) app. It works with WikiWords (i.e. you type a word which is two or more capitalised words without a space, and it creates a new page with that title and makes the word a link).
- You can also create links between documents without using WikiWords.
- There are keyboard shortcuts for every function and good rich-text features.
- You can embed media in the document, including recording audio direct into a page and drag-and-drop images.
- You can make the interface minimalist without a toolbar or sidebar, but if you want those things they are available (sidebar is good for navigating between pages)
- Sync with webdav or just put the notes file in a DropBox folder
- There's a free version which doesn't have scripting and some other features, but it's perfectly good for all the stuff I listed above.

DevonNote
Made by Devon Technologies (the same people who make DevonThink which I mentioned above), DevonNote seems the most feature-rich without being graphically overbearing of all the apps I've found. It does all the stuff VoodooPad does, but also has better organisation and search facilities, including tags and some other architectures.
It also has better facilities for putting varied media in your notes, and has tools for web clipping etc if that's your thing. You can sync by putting the database in Dropbox.

The downside to DevonNote is that there's no free version - it costs $27.

Both VoodooPad and DevonNote offer encryption for individual notes or the whole file.

I would say VoodooPad is great for most purposes, but DevonNote is the complete package at a price.

edit: actually it sounds like vim could be quite a nice option, but probably more suited to coders whereas the two I mention here are more for people managing non-computer projects.

What about Windows?

OneNote (Part of Office for Windows)

WYSIWYG note taking application modeled off of a physical tabbed notebook.

Has several levels of organization, separate notebooks, tabs, pages, sub-pages. Image support, hotlinks between pages. Has decent image support. Can do audio and video recording. Fairly easy to simple generate tables. Has a real-time collaboration editing mode. Supports tablet stylus with OCR recognition. Relatively fast text searching, will also search your notebook's images. Offline editing and network synchronization.

Personally I love this app, it's one of my favorite applications that is from Microsoft. I have it on all my computers, so I can take notes on my laptop and sync on my home network and continue working on my desktop. Probably the lamest thing is it's pay for.

Not really a note taking app, but for a web solution it's worth mentioning:
Google Documents
Free, Easy to share, WYSIWYG, does real-time collaboration and includes a simple chat box to talk to other collaborators, saves out to most standard formats. But probably not as free-form as other standalone solutions, but it works on any computer with a connection and web browser. I've recently used Google Docs and Google spreadsheet to write a collaborative game FAQ, it was pretty awesome seeing it come together. It kicked the crap out of MediaWiki as a collaboration tool.

[ファブリス]

Stickies
On Windows I loved Stickies. Best features for me is that you can set an alarm on stickies, so they go to "sleep" and will pop on your screen at given date, or daily time. A keyboard shortcut to toggle the stickes on and off makes it really easy to add notes. It's not meant as a personal wiki, but it does have some management options. You don't have to have all stickies visible all the time, you can choose to hide some, and show them again later.

I just ran across these a few days ago ...

Basket Note Pads ( http://basket.kde.org/ ) for Linux users; from KDE, but works fine in GNOME too. It looks very slick, with a surprising collection of neat features. Unfortunately, I've not had time to beat up on it.

If you're looking for a wiki-like app, you may want to check out WoaS (Wiki on a Stick), which is a stand-alone, self-modifying file you open locally in your web browser. All the features are implemented via javascript, so no web server needed (thus the "Stick": keep it on a pocket USB drive if you want).

Re: Stickies
I use Sticky Notes as the electronic equivalent of 3x5-card shuffle/scatter/gather brainstorming -- move to a clean desktop, pop up a bunch of stickies, and have fun moving them around.

Did anyone try Org-mode? It looks quite nice. Plain-text notetaking; has a free iPhone version which can sync via Dropbox.

Granted, it's an Emacs addon, but there's also a vim port. I might go try the latter out just now.

Oh, and there's a Japanese translation of the manual. Admittedly, it's an old version, but still. :p

As I didn't feel like purchasing OneNote, I was very pleased to discover my TouchSmart tm2 came with Windows Journal, which is an awesome program. It doesn't have the audio and video stuff of OneNote, though.

Just saw this: https://market.android.com/details?id=co...notesmappr

“NotesMappr is semantic note taking - note taking that fits your brain.

NotesMappr is a semantic note taking app. NotesMappr’s contextual note taking features enable the effective transmission and transformation of knowledge, ideas, and experiences.

NotesMappr is unique in that it provides you with the ability to establish meaningful relationships between your notes. Hence, NotesMappr’s distinguishing feature is the ability to both establish formal relationships (or associations) between notes and subsequently navigate said notes in a very straightforward manner.”

Oh, and for iPod Touch I really like WritePad.