Jot.as - private notes

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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.

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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:

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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.

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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?

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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.

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

Alternatively, check out “Noto”.

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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 .

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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:

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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.

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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