Needing notes

28 June, 2011

Whilst I’m thinking about all these different topics that I’m interested in, can anyone help? I’m in the market for a new desktop note-taking tool. It must start up in <3 seconds and save each note as a standalone text file, using some form of text-based notation (like wiki, textile or markdown).

If that didn’t eliminate enough options straight away, it would ideally auto-save every few seconds and allow tree-based note hierarchy. A couple of tools have come close over the years, such as WikidPad, Zim and KeepNote, but none have quite hit that sweet spot.

So, any suggestions? I am willing to pay!

See other posts tagged with general notes wiki and other posts made in June 2011.

Comments

Paul Beech

08 July, 2011 at 17:07

Don’t use desktop note taking. No persistance and everywhere accessibility. Hate stickies on OSX and Windows as they’re a bit of a dead end. Text editor and dropbox is about as close as I get.

What I do use for notes is Notes on the iPad, which syncs to gmail, and gmail drafts in the web interface. Those are the only methods that have stuck as they’re on hand and available just about everywhere if I need em.

Phil

14 July, 2011 at 21:49

I typically want desktop for speed and having a dedicated somewhere to take notes (rather than, on the desktop, two open browser windows with the same icon).

I guess I don’t really know what I want. The process is probably more important than the featureset, but everything that is more than totally basic seems lacking. I think my demands are in the uncanny valley.

Scroll Lock

05 August, 2011 at 11:41

Hi there,

I just discovered your blog, coming from a post about scuttle via google/rasterweb. At the moment I’m trying to define my workflow for things like notes, bookmarks, snippets, and whatever you might call personal-wiki’ing.

I think the perfect note taking solution would be be a local webapp with an optional corssplatform portable client so you can use hotkeys and integrate a little better. Until that comes along, I have found CintaNotes to fill my niche. There is *no* formatting, but I have designated DokuWiki as my place to put more permanent things.

For the record, I’ve also used Wikidpad, Zim and a bunch of other stuff extensively 🙂
For a good while, I kept going back to wikidpad.

Felix

05 April, 2012 at 14:22

I am actually looking for the same thing. I am currently using WikidPad which has actually pretty much all the feature I am looking for, but I think the usability is not optimal…

Graham

15 November, 2012 at 09:44

I also use WikidPad, and have for several years now. I found this while looking for a comparison between WikidPad and KeepNote.

WikidPad’s major shortcoming for me is the poor support for images.

What I really, really like though is that WikidPad stores all my stuff (>3000 pages now) as individual plain-ish text files which I can easily sync between a range of systems. Being local on my PCs, it is way faster than a web-based system and that matters quite a lot- I used a web based system before.

If I go to KeepNote it looks like I gain better image support and lose WikidPad’s automatic hot linking to other pages.

Phil

13 December, 2012 at 15:43

Yep, that seems fair. I must admit that I’m using Evernote now. It doesn’t mean many of my original requirements, but on the other hand it has a UI that doesn’t make me cry.