I have a love / hate relationship with this category of software. I understand everyone has their own preferences; mine are more specific than most, I think. For a lot of my notes, I use something called DebriefNotes - one of the very few programs I've paid for and been happy I did. It is perfect for a lot of my needs. That said, I also have some notes I need to be able to filter, not just search. DebriefNotes won't permit the level of filtering I need, so I've checked out anything I could find. Most of them were nothing even close to what I want.
Finally, I found a program,
AZZCardfile, that is almost what I need and want. Almost. But those two sticking points are driving me nuts. First, it saves all notes in a proprietary format. I hate that; I like open formats that are easily readable by half the stuff out there. Then, if you lose your license key, or whatever, you don't have to go crazy trying to figure out how to save the information you've collected. Yes, it will export to HTML and RTF - those formats are fine, but I don't want to have to remember to export each time I add information. Well, I could live with that if I have to, but the other point is the "biggie" for me.
In order to do what I want, I had to design my own system, of adding a line of coded "switches" to the end of each card's title, then I can search on any "switch" or set of them I choose. That way, I can filter out groups based on the criteria important to me, and custom design those criteria. I can even live with that; it is probably better than any predefined system for some of the things I want to do. The trouble is, I don't want to have those stupid lines of code printing with each card's title if I print them out. I'd like something just like this, but with a second "title bar" - one that can be filtered, separately OR in combination with the title (two filters, both operate to filter the list, but if one is blank it does not filter at all) but that remains hidden EXCEPT when the user chooses to create / edit it.
Does something that can do just this even exist? The thing would be a great, flexible tool for authors, researchers, what have you if only it didn't have those two annoying properties. (Even better, from my point of view, would be one that does all this does, saves in RTF or HTML or some other common format, and that allows any number of user-defined, hidden checkboxes that can be used to filter. Much less work, but I fear that would be too much to hope for... I've got to learn coding myself, so I can write the custom stuff I want and can't find.)
