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General brainstorming for Note-taking software
urlwolf:
hmm, this thread is getting interesting again. Is it never going to die?
I agree that the tree may be distracting.
The idea of "you could somehow mark some words on the text, and those words would automatically be transformed into tags" is brilliant. No program that I know implements that. CamelCase is a way of hyperlinking, but this is different (tagging is not exactly hyperlinking) right?
I currently use oneNote. I like the fact that it keeps different background colors for different topics. But I agree that sometimes it is more trouble than it's worth to place the note in the right notebook.
orcsbr:
The idea of "you could somehow mark some words on the text, and those words would automatically be transformed into tags" is brilliant. No program that I know implements that. CamelCase is a way of hyperlinking, but this is different (tagging is not exactly hyperlinking) right?
-urlwolf (September 24, 2006, 03:04 PM)
--- End quote ---
Yeah, indeed i used wikis' CamelCase only as an example of hyperlinking. I personally don't like CamelCase, because it just works well with expressions, so all your notes' titles end up LookingLikeThis. For me the ideal would be indicating the tags on a note by writing the words between brackets or such.
But it is, like you said, totally different from hyperlinking articles/notes, because on wikis, the CamelCase or Brackets point to a title of another article. Here, they are indicating a tag. So, you are writing, and you want to file the note using a tag whose word appears on the note body, so you put the word between brackets beforehand, instead of having to type the word again on the tag fieldline.
And also, and i think this is just what you have grasped, you could make it the other way around, having the software to scan the notes' text for expressions that match existing tags, and hyperlinking these words on the fly. So you are viewing a note that has the word 'math' on it, but its tagged with other expressions. But you have tagged other items with the tag 'math', so the word is hyperlinked. One click leads you to a list of all the entries tagged 'math'.
This is a way of implementing effortless linking, which is one of the things that drive me away from wikis. I don't like wikis because, despite the fact that many of the notes i want to file don't need a title (!), it is a system based on linking. It is easy linking with brackets or camelcase and such, but every note will be mainly acessible via hiperlinks. The more you hiperlink to it, the more accessible it is. This is good if you are building a closed reference system, but it is not if you want a software to use as a general knowledge base for your life. It's like: "oh my god, thats such an interesting article i've just found on the web, let me add to my wiki! but wait, from where will i link to it? It is about the fact that Microsoft Zune adds DRM even to garage recordings! Will i link from my 'Zune' article (considering that i've done one),or from the 'Microsoft' one, or 'Gadget', from 'DRM', or from 'Copyright'? Ok, i'd better link from all of them, let me go from each one of these places and link it, so i'm sure i'll find it back."
Of course it is not practical, because on real life we need places (tags and its intersections) which relate directly to our mind concepts about stuff, so we can quickly drop information in. That's why i don't believe on TiddlyWiki, Wikidpad, and ConnectedText. Connected Text has been from 1.3 to 2.0 since i last tested it, but it is still a wiki, i don't think i'll use it.
Another way (maybe better?) of having effortless links with tagged information, is just like del.icio.us does it. If you are listing your bookmarks with the 'tech' tag, you also see the 'related tags', as the system counts what other tags are more common among the items with the 'tech' tag. And you can even intersect on the fly with that tag, by clicking the '+' sign.
thomthowolf:
So, you are writing, and you want to file the note using a tag whose word appears on the note body, so you put the word between brackets beforehand, instead of having to type the word again on the tag fieldline.
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This is already a capability of evernote, which I make a lot of use of. Further, you can designate a word to be a category and automatically assign anything in your database that contains that word to that category. Let's say, for example you wanted to collect all your website passwords together into your evernote database. You can merrily drop them in, either typing or using web capture, and, since you probably used the Username: password: format, you can make "password:" a category and every note you typed or captured that contains "password:" will be connected.
Now, the other half of that, to give me an indicator that I have used a word as a category elsewhere, would be really cool.
orcsbr:
So, you are writing, and you want to file the note using a tag whose word appears on the note body, so you put the word between brackets beforehand, instead of having to type the word again on the tag fieldline.
--- End quote ---
This is already a capability of evernote, which I make a lot of use of.-thomthowolf (September 24, 2006, 06:17 PM)
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You really mean this? Well, i knew i could preselect one or more categories and then new notes filed will bear those categories automatically, and i also knew that you could set up smart categories, so that if one note has determined word, that category is auto-assigned to it. But i didnt know that you could mark words and they are transformed into categories on-the-fly.... (this is what i undestood you were talking about, sorry if it's not that at all)
I use evernote a little bit here, but i'm not very fond of its usability. The program itself brings many new things to notetaking software, and in this sense, it is deserved attention. But, otherwise i always feel that it takes too many clicks to do anything on it, and i like to be able to make a note AND sort it at the same time i'm talking on the phone or doing anything else that i can't lose my focus (like reading a book), and return to it just when it is really needed. But the fact that you have to drag categories or click on the stamp icon to bring up the category dialog box is really a chore....
Also, i feel that the program is a little bit confusing when it uses flexible categorization (tags, or categories, on evernote lingo), but still uses a hierarchical tree (rigid categorization) on the leftpane to allow access of the tags. Not only you can have sub-categories (if you can intersect any categories, why would you need subcategories??), but they can even have the same name as other categories if they are do not have the same parent. Very confusing.
Also, the leftpane is used as an index of categories, the only way of accessing them. This may be ok right now, because Evernotes capabilities are leashed by the way the program is presented, in a way that you don't take as many notes and don't categorize it as much as you wanted because it takes much effort to do it. But in a scenario that Evernote evolves to its full capabilities, the category index on the right panel won't be of any help, because first, it is not alphabetical, and even if it was, if one is a prolific categorizer/tagger, it will take much time to browse the list, so another way to reach categories will be needed. For example, i didn't count, but i think i have at least more than two hundred tags on del.icio.us, so instead of browsing the list, i just type my desired tag intersection combo, and there i am.
So, i wish there was a line field where you could input your category intersection of choice on Evernote. The category list could even continue to exist there, preferably switchable with other sidebars, like one where you could bookmark your most useful categories (or category combos) and keep it as a reference... this is a convenient way of making the concept of virtual folders, as suggested on this thread by Mouser, into Evernote.
Sugar:
I'm not sure that this is the correct place for my suggestion :-[ , but it is a recent discovery for me and I fell in love with it. It's a programmer editor he says, but I do not program and it does precisely what I need.
It is free (donation) ware and needs no installation. Feel free to move this post to wherever it should go. (sorry)
http://www.pspad.com/en/download.php
Sugar
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