Jot.as - private notes

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37

Hi @matt

It is great that you are working on a note-taking app. I am definitely excited, after having used write.as which is brilliant.

Below is my features whish-list:

  • wiki style links between notes
  • Knowledge-graph view to explore links between notes
  • Full markdown support
  • formatted PDF export

Link support and knowledge graph will make the entire repository of notes a lot more usable once the total number of notes stored by a user become large in number.

Visual representation makes it easier for navigation and reference, without having to manually remember the relationship between various notes.

PS: In addition, consider a +1 from me for the inputs from others on encryption and privacy. I didn’t feel the need to elaborate on that as I know that you will adopt a privacy centric design. Love your work! Thank you!

38

I don’t have much use for notes applications. Pretty much everything for me fits into Day One and I use multiple journals but I do have some things which could sway me I think.

  1. End to end encryption. I’ve gotten spoiled with the transparent way Day One manages this. I tried standard notes a few times. I don’t care for the mobile apps that much. I don’t like the extension method in standard notes either.
  2. Folder based navigation. I don’t care for hashtags as the only method like how Bear notes works
  3. Publish to write.as as a service. I’d like to publish to write.as from a notes app. This may be the biggest gee whiz wowzers thing for me.
  4. Focused writing like IAwriter or the others.
  5. Backlinks or wiki links or whatever to link between notes like Bear notes does things now. This is not big for me. It just seems like one of the features everyone could use. I like it though!

All this being said since I am not a big note taker, I may try the app and particularly how well it syncs and publishes to a blog but I doubt I would change my lack of desire to write notes. To publish now to write.as it’s easy to just use copy and paste so I can use a tool like IAwriter or pretext, or 1writer.

I’m probably not the target audience for a detailed note taking app. I don’t have any real use for one but I do like new shiny things :grinning:

2 Likes
39

StandardNotes dead-simple publishing to listed.to is a great feature. I used to use HackMD which also had a publish button. But at the same time you can’t beat the collaboraion on Google Keep: the ability to create a grocery list with actual items that can be checked off and share that with someone who can see/make changes in realtime. Maybe this puts a dependency of getting draft.as out the door first :wink:

1 Like
40

interesting i know for one collaborative live documents, typing or viewing indicators are a surefire way to have me never use a tjing again. it is an intellectual encroachment, and while i dont value the judgement of others unless i ask for advice, it still feels stifling.

what aspect of this do you find beneficial in your workflow? does it fractalize your attention? if not ever considered see perhaps if yore more productive in a text editor and then run the same kind of workday in a realtime collab thing like google sheets.

im actually way curious. i think about how the human mind parses and processes quite often (daily really,) so this is intriguing.

salut :slight_smile:

41

Typing indicators in live documents? Can you show an example? I have only seen those ("…") in messaging applications. Viewing indicators are nice to know who’s there, just as a bunch of people standing at a whiteboard can all see each other, but I’m not talking about and don’t really need that.

Many scnarios require concentration and working solo is best, but for those that require interaction, theres not really a replacement for it. Having the functionality there doesn’t require you use it. If it makes you shy you simply do not enable sharing and the experience is identical.

The only example I mentioned was a grocery list, which I hope doesn’t also make you vulnerable to feeling intellectually encroached upon by someone adding their items to the list or crossing items off as you shop at different parts of the store.

There is not one workflow for something as multifacetous as writing. Multiple people taking notes during an event/call can speak freely knowing someone else will cover if they stop typing. You can produce some types of things faster by working in different parts at the same time. You can start implementing or responding to suggestions on a finished paper before the editor even gets through the piece. You could play ASCII tic-tac-toe if you wanted haha

You mean fracture? Or somehow make my attention recursive

42

recursion unto the original task being completed or worked on- but the attention as an expansion set, not the reverse as typically assumed in mathematics how you did :slight_smile: sorry it was a bit late, it was a bifold remark and i was not clear.

it appears we can really only do one thing at a time and we are “micro switching,” generally.

unless you have an astounding SA (situational awareness) and are uaing a multi sensory approach. like right now im listening to birds outside and writing this by feel alone and i can sense my attention and focus shifting when i glance up for typo checking.

43

Here’s what I like about the note-taking tools I use regularly:

I use iA Writer (macOS, iOS) for most personal notes. It synchs reliably over iCloud, works off-line, supports all my Markdown needs. It handles large notes well (I have complete books in a single note with ten thousands of words.) It handles huge numbers of notes well (over a thousand and counting). It pays attention to detail in the user interface; usability is excellent. You can embed images. All files are directly accessible via the finder. There’s no database, just plain text files. It can access files on various sources, like OneDrive- or Dropbox-Folders. And it’s fast.

I use Noteplan (macOS, iOS) for task- and calendar-related notes. Like iA writer all notes are directly accessible as plain text files. Synchronisation via CloudKit works fast and reliably.

I use Goodnotes (macOS, iOS) for visual note-taking.

I use iThoughts and Mindnode (macOS, iOS) for personal Mind Maps.

For sharing I prefer to use separate apps. I don’t like to mix personal and collaborative note-taking. I don’t mind to copy and paste.

Encryption isn’t an issue for most of my personal notes.

What would you like to see in an app meant just for your own notes?

Speed! Every millisecond counts. I hate to wait for a Note taking app.

Scalability! It must handle huge numbers of large notes. It must handle images. It must integrate well with the operating system’s file system, not try to fight or replace it.

Portability/Compatiblity. Notes are my external brain. I don’t want to be locked in a platform. They must be easy to backup and transfer. I want to be able to read them 40 years from now. (Hence UTF8-Textfiles with Markdown or HTML as preferred file format.)

Hierarchical Structures. I love folders for personal notes. Non-hierarchical approaches like Wikis are great for collaborative note-taking, because it’s difficult to agree on a common hierarchy. :wink: But I want to be able to structure my personal notes any way I please.

Search. This is the single most important feature. I want to find my notes fast. (Hashtags and smart folders/filters are great!)

What has frustrated you about other note-taking apps?

Mostly slowness, formatting, lock-in and feature creep.

OneNote opens slowly and has a very strange way of placing text in a notes.

Apple Notes wants to be pretty, where it doesn’t matter. Most of my personal notes are plain text, where only content matters. Markdown covers all my markup needs.

Dropbox Paper is slow and it comes with all the downsides of a proprietary web-based service.

Evernote is exactly the opposite of what I like to see in an app meant just for my own notes. :wink:

1 Like
44

I was trying to describe this exact type of feel how your workflow goes to my dad. I feel like I am in symbolic jail using open office or word…

IA is great but it feels a bit limited for me. I prefer an easier to edit keyboard the haptics drive me nuts. Otherwise I really dig it but the focus mode could be more intuitive.

I’ll upload my homescreen right now so you can try and visualize what I’m doing.

No app is perfect yet but it’s a blend of a few and it’s working out okay.

One central locale in files, in not too keen on iCloud but it works for now, every month or so I plan to dump everything as a .tar.gz via good reader connect to ssh and my laptop so I can dump to sticks…

It’s weird being nearly forty and moving away from fountain pens and literally smith corona typewriters…

Thanks for this post, it makes me feel less weird … haha!

:slight_smile:

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46

Here’s my page 2… these are all useful for one reason or other. But I can’t use them daily because they’re less than useable in some weird way or other.

Yesterday I spent an hour or so messing with the pythonista keyboard and decided special characters was too difficult to encase and visual-stat the tokens in the “special chars” row, and found “snippets” was far better suited to that, integrating with iOS text replacement.

The idea being I could markdown in any app without having to hit shift a lot, or similar, and could boost apps that for example have a terrible extended keyboard for markdown but otherwise are pretty neat.

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Don’t get me started on Ulysses… nothing bad to say but my goodness that thing is obfuscation central.

47

That’s my feeling about many writing, note-taking and to-do-list apps.

Have you ever tried to access 20 or 30 year old data, that was stored in some proprietary format created by some out-of-business app? It’s messy, if not impossible. I lost too much data because files couldn’t be interpreted or decrypted anymore. I learned to worry less about hiding data from other people and and more about not accidentally hiding data from myself. :wink:

If Evernote and OneNote are the closest competitors, jot.as should support a similar One-Big-Obscure-Bucket approach. It’s not the way I personally think about private note-taking, but it seems to work for many people. They just throw everything in this big bucket, hoping they’ll find it again when they need it.

But that’s not the behavior I’d expect from an app called jot.as by the makers of write.as. Cambridge Dictionary defines “jot” as:

to make a quick short note of something

jot.as should feel lightweight, simple, fast, transparent, open. IMHO that’s pretty much the opposite of obfuscating data-dumps like Evernote or OneNote.

48

Have you tried Obsidian?

1 Like
49

Right now I’m testing out this app called cryptonium. We’ll see how that goes. I actually far prefer security through vaguery and hiding in plain sight but ML may be putting an end to that strategy.

50

You might like “mettle”. It’s pretty nice.

Alternatively, check out “Noto”.

51

Mettle feels like a toy and so does noto.

I’ve really been enjoying cryptonium, and a very simple editor called “type” and also occasionally “AceMark.”

But for private notes cryptonium is a zero knowledge thing and seems legitimate. I subscribed .

1 Like
52

I usually recommend:

Sadly, no open source options combine all three feature sets well

53

Hi!
Over the time I’ve been using a variety of note taking apps/platforms.

  • Evernote : Proprietary, closed source, no local storage option, good notebook handling, sharing notes options
  • OneNote : Closed source, great hand write/draw support (I used it in a Windows tablet as Evernote lack of handwriting), good notebook handling, good image handling
  • Standard Notes : No notebook handling (based on tags). E2E private encryption (no self-hosted). Paid bunch of features. Free edition is pretty simple.
  • Simplenote : No notebook handling (based on tags). The notes aren’t encrypted in their servers !!! Based in Wordpress technology
  • Nextcloud Notes : Good notebook handling, E2E private encryption (sef-hosted option)
  • Joplin : Good notebook handling, E2E encryption with option to use clouds, self-hosted file-share or their server, limited image handling.

Please, note that this are my thoughts about those apps, they aren’t universal truths. :wink:

So:

It would be well appreciated if:

  • Server has an open source self-hosted version just like WriteFreely is.
  • Apps are open source, just like WriteFreely are.
  • E2E private encryption is provided
  • Export notes to various formats is available (say md, html, epub, pdf)
  • Extended Markdown is supported
  • Notebooks are supported
  • Note sharing is available (perhaps turning the note into a Write.as post)
  • Hand drawing over note text is possible (maybe svg can help with this)
    I miss this so much (from OneNote) when I try to organize my own thoughts or taking notes in a class with my tablet.
  • Extended Image handling is provided
    • Just a few thoughts here:
      A simple attribute definition for images may do the trick:
      ![Alt text](image route){alignment, screen size%, wrapping}
      where:
      Alignment : can be left, right or center
      Screen size : is a % of view width
      Wrapping : can be none, before, after, background

Finally, there are two features I haven’t seen in any note taking app.

  • Speech recognition
  • OCR text recognition

You may argue they are not purely note writing, but they are definitely note taking when there’s no time to use the keyboard.

Well, that’s a pretty long list! :sweat_smile: :sweat_smile:

1 Like
54

… dang i have never heard of ANY of these… thanks, I’ll check into them. As far as secure notes on linux goes, dont get me started, but theres a cool journaling app that has PGP or other type of locking called Almirah, iirc, and then some other things, but linux as you know is a darn rabbit hole with no end, but i think thats why most of us like it.

1 Like
55

Yes I’ve just been using it for about a month. its pretty good!

56

When will a beta be released?

57

And @matt , I think a couple of the suggestions I made here could/would fit the (initial) Jot.as product nicely. Some of what was mentioned may be near impossible with HTML/CSS/JS/etc, but it may be beyond simple and I just don’t know it.

Looking forward to a beta product sometime. :slight_smile:
later