Author Topic: General brainstorming for Note-taking software (Read 900031 times)

tomos · « **Reply #575 on:** July 30, 2007, 12:35 PM »

Zoot's organization features are so powerful, no other program offers it. It's automatic rules, filtering, categorizing, etc is really great (I would liken it to a really powerful email filtering system). Evernote is doing a decent job in this area, but once Zoot is finished in the 32-bit version, Evernote will just be eye-candy.
-superboyac (July 30, 2007, 11:50 AM)

sounds great, expensive though, innit?! ($99)

superboyac · « **Reply #576 on:** July 30, 2007, 01:47 PM »

Yes, it sure is. I think people who use it heavily will say it's well worth it, but Zoot will have a hard time prying people away from other programs with that kind of price tag. Evernote 2.0 is very (almost eerily) similar to Zoot in it's look and function, and it's free. However, Evernote is not nearly as powerful as Zoot. So, as a user, you will have to decide if the additional poweruser features are worth the extra $100 (EN is basically free unless you want the text recognition features). I posted in Zoot's forum about this and told them that the price is going to have to be considered because of Evernote. I'm guessing the author will ignore the price issue (maybe even increase the price). On one hand, I'm sure the Zoot cult will have no problem with the price or the upgrade fee. however, I feel if he were to make the price more competitive with Evernote ($30-50 range) he would attract enough additional customers to make it worth it.

Hopefully, we can get a good discount here at DC!

alxwz · « **Reply #577 on:** July 30, 2007, 02:08 PM »

A discount here at DC would be a dream come true.

Tom Davis seems to be rolling out a new beta every other day now.
Unfortunately, I don't have any spare time ATM to play with it

Armando · « **Reply #578 on:** July 30, 2007, 04:58 PM »

@tomos

Normally, you'd write " monitor ", with spaces and quotes. But that particular syntaxic feature has been broken in the newest release. i've posted about it at the everNote forum. I got some answers, but nothing from the developers. (There are other advanced syntax trics you can read about in the help file, and others you won't even find in the help file -- for these you have to search the forum. Have you been to the EverNote Forum? Tons of good advices there.)

One way of dealing more efficiently with categories is to use special keyword filters. Not actual words, but abbreviations you make up yourself.

@Superboyac

How does the Zoot 32-bits deal with graphics ? Evernote is/was much stronger in this area. Graphics are not that much of a big deal for me, but we live in 2007.

"Organizationwise" we'd need something like "Zoot meets X1", but for the whole file system.

superboyac · « **Reply #579 on:** July 31, 2007, 01:39 AM »

@Superboyac

How does the Zoot 32-bits deal with graphics ? Evernote is/was much stronger in this area. Graphics are not that much of a big deal for me, but we live in 2007.

"Organizationwise" we'd need something like "Zoot meets X1", but for the whole file system.
-Armando (July 30, 2007, 04:58 PM)

Zoot32 doesn't deal any differently with graphics than Zoot16 (yet). In other words, there is no graphics functionality other than linking to a graphic file. I want to emphasize that at this point, there are no tangible differences between Zoot32 and Zoot16 other than the underlying base being 32-bit instead of 16-bit, which is ultimately transparent to the user. The author has only mentioned RTF support as an added functionality in the works for later beta versions.

Yes, Evernote does images and other pretty things better than Zoot. Zoot is a hardcore text-based application. EverNote is much more geared toward a general class of users that need a wide variety of text, formatted text, webclips, images, etc. support. Zoot is for people who have an enormous amount of text they need to organized in a pretty uniquely powerful manner.

Zoot meets X1 is nice to think about, but don't bet on it. I don't think Zoot will be an indexer of any type in the near future. I like Archivarius for indexing.

Darwin · « **Reply #580 on:** July 31, 2007, 10:06 AM »

I think Evernote's big strength, at least in my usage, is in saving webpages. I like it for saving things like purchase receipts. For notetaking, I use both TexNotes Pro and ZuluPad Pro. TexNotes Pro is great but in my opinion overly complex and ultimately will probably get the boot. I'm curious about Zoot, though... Looks interesting. Zoot meets Archivarius would be AWESOME as I am an Archivarius fan as well. It's emphasis is on text and speed...

rjbull · « **Reply #581 on:** July 31, 2007, 10:52 AM »

I think Evernote's big strength, at least in my usage, is in saving webpages. I like it for saving things like purchase receipts.
-Darwin (July 31, 2007, 10:06 AM)

I use Local Website Archive for that, but the usual "problem" is that it's treated as a new session and has to be logged in again, annoying if you already have the page you want in your main browser. I sometimes work around that by saving the page to disk complete, adding that copy to LWA, then deleting the temp files. Does EverNote avoid the need to log in a second time?

Not that I can use the full version of EverNote at work anyway, because it needs administrative rights to install, which company policy doesn't give me. But I've wondered about the portable (USB) version.

Darwin · « **Reply #582 on:** July 31, 2007, 11:46 AM »

I know nothing about Surfulater, but note that it is going to be on offer at a discount here soon (sorry - read about it this morning and cannot now find the link!). Maybe this will fit the bill? It's an excellent notetaker in addition to checking webpages for changes and (I think) organizing your bookmarks. Might be worth a look anyway...

Wordzilla · « **Reply #583 on:** July 31, 2007, 12:00 PM »

I know nothing about Surfulater, but note that it is going to be on offer at a discount here soon (sorry - read about it this morning and cannot now find the link!).
-Darwin (July 31, 2007, 11:46 AM)

https://www.donation...18.msg68253#msg68253

Armando · « **Reply #584 on:** July 31, 2007, 12:21 PM »

Zoot is for people who have an enormous amount of text they need to organized in a pretty uniquely powerful manner.
-superboyac (July 31, 2007, 01:39 AM)

Well, I do have about 15 gb of text in various format (mainly rtf, txt, doc, djvu and pdf) I've gattered during the past 10 years for my studies, and I was never able to really test Zoot's legendary power on them [edit : not the whole 15gb, of course!! just a few docs...] -- I got the error "The Win 16 Subsystem has insufficent resources to continue running, blah blah blah...". Anyway.

Regarding EverNote… Because of some of its limitations, and because I don't like software functions duplication, I use EverNote almost exclusively for notes that, for various reasons, I don't want to classify immediatly. But I empty my EverNote database every week and file everything before it becomes out of control. So, everything else -- well, almost -- is perfectly named and organized, and instantly found with X1/archivarius, Farr/locate. I almost don't use any other applications as far as searching goes; I still miss a better tagging system though (I use tags in filenames, it works well, but it's not optimal for various reasons — tag2find might be what I’m looking for, eventually… when its new version comes out), a good way of managing virtual folders and cloning files, other ways of displaying info, etc.

Zoot meets X1 is nice to think about, but don't bet on it. I don't think Zoot will be an indexer of any type in the near future. I like Archivarius for indexing.
-superboyac (July 31, 2007, 01:39 AM)

I won't bet on Zoot meets X1... I was not thinking of zoot becoming an indexer. But I’m a bit sick of having to import my stuff into different databases (and loosing formating and other usefull tweakings in the process) to be able to use the organizing power of some software. That's the main reason why I never really bought into any of the Ultra Recall, myBase, etc. solutions... And even EverNote, to some extent, since I only keep around 40-50 notes max in there, for very practical reason (at some point, I had 800 notes in there — which, I’m sure, is much less than other EverNote’s users — and it literally became a nightmare; I really *hated* to work with such a a big amount of “pseudo classified” notes, and now I’m pretty much back to a more conservative way of working but so very much more efficient…). Being able to find/see everything with one or two software -- x1/archivarius --, is much more powerful. My database is my file system (the discussion went in that direction at some point in this thread -- regrettably, it was dismissed...).

And, yes, Archivarius is good : not too resource hungry, deals well with huge documents, cheap for students, etc. But as far as its features go, it really lacks at least 2 or 3 extremely useful things that X1 has : to be able to memorize searches and settings (for the various searches) AND create “virtual folders” for these searches and organize them in folder trees. So, I mainly use X1… but always keep Archivarius there, ready to rescue.

Darwin · « **Reply #585 on:** July 31, 2007, 01:31 PM »

I know nothing about Surfulater, but note that it is going to be on offer at a discount here soon (sorry - read about it this morning and cannot now find the link!).
-Darwin (July 31, 2007, 11:46 AM)

https://www.donation...18.msg68253#msg68253
-Wordzilla (July 31, 2007, 12:00 PM)

Thanks Wordzilla!

tomos · « **Reply #586 on:** July 31, 2007, 04:51 PM »

But I’m a bit sick of having to import my stuff into different databases (and loosing formating and other usefull tweakings in the process) to be able to use the organizing power of some software. That's the main reason why I never really bought into any of the Ultra Recall, myBase, etc. solutions... And even EverNote, to some extent, since I only keep around 40-50 notes max in there, for very practical reason (at some point, I had 800 notes in there — which, I’m sure, is much less than other EverNote’s users — and it literally became a nightmare; I really *hated* to work with such a a big amount of “pseudo classified” notes
-Armando (July 31, 2007, 12:21 PM)

in evernote,
without very many notes, I find the scroll already becoming a bit of a pain
(I'll be polite & say "in the wrist" - all that scrolling) -
I miss being able to look in the tree & being able to see the note titles & pick the relevant one

you still miss tagging though? in general I mean - not necessarily evernote's in particular..

Armando · « **Reply #587 on:** July 31, 2007, 07:05 PM »

Tagging (or "keywording") is essential to go beyond current folder hierarchies (but not necessarily beyond hierarchies in general; that's a common misconception, because hierarchies are still primordial), and transcend simple and anecdotal "word searches" -- that's why we use keywords in any good classification system.

Virtual folders (even "search folders" or whatever) could/should function in close relationship with tags.

One thing EverNote misses to deal better with bigger databases is the possibility to have multiple tabs/windows of the same database. But I'm not a huge fan of big databases anyway : harder to backup quickly (unless you use DeltaCopy or similar technology -- but even that, I found, is not always that efficient), corruption affects the whole thing if its corrupted, transfert of documents in and out (for various reasons...) is cumbersome.

iphigenie · « **Reply #588 on:** August 01, 2007, 08:00 AM »

What i like in evernote is that i spend time tagging things rather than organising - and it is a lot more powerful and less time consuming (that and something can have 2 tags, but 2 locations is less simple). In email, file management and note management you eventually grow tired of constantly dragging things around, creating new folders, reorganising etc.

I have hundreds of thousands of emails going back 10 years, images in similar proportion, bits of information accumulating... and lots of bits i dont capture/save cause i just dont have the time to organise them. Being able to dump them somewhere and tag them would be a lot quicker than anything...

I think i would love a document management system that
- works on the tagging/virtual organisation model rather than physical location (by type, by date, by keywords in the document, by tags)
- makes it easy to capture/create quick notes as documents

that could work quite well as a note taking system (making all the notes as individual documents) as well as document management

adriatic · « **Reply #589 on:** August 10, 2007, 07:11 AM »

I've just found this forum by chance.

Since being an outliner author, here are the description of the two of my own programs.
I am interested in user's opinions and quality ideas.

NoteCase outliner helps you to organize your text notes into a document, with individual notes placed in the tree-like structure. To ensure your privacy, encrypted document format is supported.
Project is multi-platform and open source (BSD license).
[Win/Linux/OSX/FreeBSD/Zaurus/Nokia N800]

You can read more at http://notecase.sourceforge.net

--------------------

NoteCase Pro is an advanced commercial version of Notecase project.
It's an outliner that helps you to organize your text notes into a document, with individual notes placed in the tree-like structure, supporting encrypted document format.
[Win/Linux/OSX/Zaurus/Nokia N800]

You can read more at:
http://www.virtual-sky.com/
http://factoriel.blogspot.com/

Darwin · « **Reply #590 on:** August 10, 2007, 09:22 AM »

Welcome to DC, Adriatic!

I haven't downloaded and tried NoteCase out yet, but I visited the Pro version website and two things strike me immediately: first, I like your licence structure - the reasonable price jump to go from a single platform licence to ALL platforms is a nice touch, as is the availability of a lifetime licence. Second, the interface looks nice and clean. To comment beyond this, I'll obviously have to install it and give it a workout.

One query: what are the differences between the Open Source version and the Pro version? I coudn't find a feature matrix or other type of comparison. Just curious.

More later, I hope. However, the real guru on this stuff is Superboyac - hopefully he sees your post and comments!

melitabel · « **Reply #591 on:** August 10, 2007, 06:44 PM »

I have used Net Snippets more than any other program, though I also have Surfulator and EverNote. What makes Net Snippets stand our for me is the automatic report feature. My job entails finding information, organizing it, summarizing and commenting on it, and then emailing it to clients.

I've always found editing slow when I have a large report and want to use Word as the editor.

Since NS isn't being sold or supported anymore, can anyone suggest which other programs might best approximate this reporting/sharing function?

adriatic · « **Reply #592 on:** August 11, 2007, 12:30 AM »

Notecase Pro currently has these additional features (from the "Features" page):
- multiple documents support (MDI)
- import for Knowit, Keynote, Treepad, Tuxcards documents
- spellchecker support
- bulleted list formatting
- edit embedded images using defined external image editor application
- link to an exact node inside another Notecase document
- new node view - flat list view - that can be filled by a search action

I am in the process of adding more advanced things into the Pro version.

BTW, Notecase is quite popular in Linux world, at least 5 distros that I know ship Notecase in default setup (Wolvix, Frugalware, Puppy Linux, PCLinuxOS, Toutou Linux) and many major distros have Notecase in their package repository (Fedora, Ubuntu, ...).

Steven Avery · « **Reply #593 on:** September 01, 2007, 03:49 PM »

Hi Folks,

World-class thread, thanks.
Newbie poster here, couple of limited thoughts.

rtf: (especially re: Zoot)
Please keep in mind that .rtf is a lot more than pictures, which some need, some don't. For myself, I use color and bold especially (and other .rtf features) as simple emphasis for my own benefit, or in writing I send out. I have really appreciated that Zoot may be the leader of the pack in many ways but till Dave comes up with the basics there I will have to pass, looking forward later to the .rtf implementation and then a trial. I am glad to hear he is making headway ! As soon as he has color and bold and underlining and italics, even if nothing else, it will be worth a real spin and the $99 would be fine if the program is as good as some say. If I copy in my own text, or something from a forum or a web page, that has basic .rtf I really don't want to lose that info.

Keyword:
It is amazing how powerful and significant good tagging is. Simply my Powermarks bookmarks, with a little subject-line tweaking, makes it possible to keep a library of web-pages on 100's of subjects easily available. Powermarks became my pseudo-Pim while using Time&Chaos and Keynote and this and that. The keyword search of Powermarks is the starting point (along with scanning certain mailboxes in my own email) for any research project.

The note-pim-surfing etc software that I will like is the one that really has the tagging metaphor for pulling out related data snippets at a high level.

So if folks want to indicate how Evernote and NoteCasePro and Zoot and X1 & Achivarus and UltraRecall and Surfulater and the others are on the keyword issue, please share away. (I will assume it is only Zoot that lacks basic .rtf unless there is indications of another.) Keyword tagging is only one feature out of dozens but I do not want to spend hours, or even a download, on any software that is not strong in this manner. The right metaphor with less detail is better than the lesser philosophy implemented with lots of extras. At this point a heirarchal and scan approach only is not sufficient for my style for any project.

So those are my preliminary thoughts. I have a little project of a few articles planned (probably from 2-20 pages) on some research on some Bible issues so I am looking for a good tool or two to start working with. Yes that also starts to lean over to the writing and outlining areas but really I am more concerned with having the snippets of data correlated and connected easily, as done with Powermarks for webpages, as a start. The hardest part of the writing is having the source data manageable.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
Queens, NY

PS.
Hmm.. is the html implemented in this forum ?
Usually I "take" a color if it is.

doublewitt · « **Reply #594 on:** September 13, 2007, 06:47 PM »

I read some of the commentaries about TreeDBNotes PRO. There I find the review rather evasive because it doesn't tell the story like it is. For example, one comment was that the toolbar is too impressive. But there you've missed the point. You overlooked the "flexibility" in TreeDBNotes PRO. You can show only those toolbars that interest you OR you can show NONE and simply use the drop-downs. I've seen other apps with loads more toolbars - TreeDBNotes PRO doesn't really have so much! It's useless to fuss about toolbars when you have built-in flexibility. If TreeDBNotes PRO "imposed" 300 toolbars then the commentary would be OK, but that's not the case. You can "personalize" your environment.

The remark about TreeDBNotes PRO not being "considered" as a notes manager is really out-of-socket. TreeDBNotes PRO does an excellant job as a note-taking software - and far beyond many I have tried. I would NEVER swing back to Keynote (past user) after using TreeDBNotes PRO. Even so, Keynote had so-called features I didn't really need. TreeDBNotes PRO does NOT do everything but simply manages various "forms" of notes and for example, TreeDB is "light" compared to do-Organizer. I think your review is very shallow and not insightful. You haven't even come close to understanding what this application really is. Maybe you rushed your review...

...just my opinion...

JaneDC · « **Reply #595 on:** September 14, 2007, 02:15 PM »

hi. when was the review published?

Darwin · « **Reply #596 on:** September 14, 2007, 02:26 PM »

There was no formal review of TreeDBNotes per se - just comments posted in this thread and a summary of this thread posted as a roundup here. The summary in the roundup states this about TreeDBNotes:

TreeDB is another EATKS* software. It does everything, and is more of a PIM than a notetaking program. Just its toolbar is enormous! So many buttons! It is pretty powerful, but it does way too much for me to say that it's a good notetaking software.

*EATKS = "Everything and the Kitchen Sink"

doublewitt · « **Reply #597 on:** September 14, 2007, 11:39 PM »

TreeDBNotes PRO is not "simply and uniquely" a one-styled notes organizer, ofcourse, but TreeDB offers flexibility and versatility. The truth is, in the world of notes management, there are diversified opinions. Notes exist in many forms which properly include text notes, calendar event notes, todo notes, reminder notes, web clip notes, and so on. And basically, for me, anything I write down is a "note". You have all kinds of notes and the definition of a notes manager should be inclusive for all. That's what a real note-taking application should be. If you want to dissect notes by their characteristics and use a single application for each style of note, well, that's a different story. The problems related to that are endless...

A real PIM is exactly what the word says: a personal info manager. A notes software for texts "alone", is also a PIM - why? - because it's managing personal information as well. However, it's limited by definition and purpose. Ofcourse, that's just my opinion and I know some would disagree. But that's where it stands for me. Any notes manager is a PIM. I think that people got mixed up somewhere along the line and "branded" versatile notes managers as PIM's - but all are the same. I will never be satisfied using several applications to manage all my notes. That doesn't promote real efficiency. Basically, the most "important" aspect for me in notes management, is the ability to "consolidate" all my information in one central location. There are loads of advantages to that - experience would tell. Centralizing data helps to develop a powerful vision for notes management as recorded "data" is viewed. In turn, you can better harness data relationships and validate useful management resources. Consolidating data is optimal efficiency. Should I have a program for every kind of note? Quite frankly, I would say no... and quite frankly, I'm not interested in a wild goose chase for loads of softwares for every dissected "bit". You simply cannot be "organized" efficiently like that. So many people fail to see the importance of "consolidation" - they don't grasp it because they have been brain-washed by "standalone" propaganda.

Your focus is: *ILLGC software

inefficient, low, level, goose chaser

Armando · « **Reply #598 on:** September 15, 2007, 12:31 AM »

Interesting thoughts on the nature of note-taking software and PIMs. Thanks.

IMO, "Consolidation" (if I understand what you mean by that) is not always nice and is often a synonym of compromise (not always though! Not always!

).

Yes, I tend to condense everything that has to do with goals, needs, projects, to-dos, calendar events, important reference lists, etc. in Outlook (for very pragmatic purpose : want to have access to that data with my Palm), but tend to keep everything else in separate documents (usually doc or pdf, for text). I have thousands of documents, and everything is easily accessible through an organizational system I've created for myself, using X1 and farr. I don’t really miss any true consolidated "database". (Well… not with the currently available solutions, and the compromises I feel I’d have to make ; but I do keep my eyes open for potential solutions…). What I mostly miss is something that doesn't really exist : a consolidated, powerfull, full featured and lightweight interface to access everything on my computer. Something Like X1 meets farr meets Directory Opus meets tag2find, an interface that would use the whole file system as the back end for the ultimate PIM or Note Taking software (to paraphrase Jimdoria who said something similar, somewhere in this thread).

Anyway....I guess it all depends on what kind of info you want to store, how you want to be able to access it, and how you later want to use it. I've pondered for a while about whether I should use Ultra Recall, MyBase, TreeDBNotes PRO, etc. and if they would constitute viable solutions to my organizational problems. My (again.... very personal) conclusion (after trying many softwre for many weeks) is that they wouldn't really help me enough and would actually slow me down. These apps often impose many restrictions on data (tend to destroy formatting, makes duplication necessary or won't preserve links between their database and external documents, don’t have searching capabilities as powerful as dedicated desktop search tools, etc. etc.). So I've decided to keep it more simple, avoid unnecessary (for me) steps, and instead use the powerful desktop search software at hand + intelligent document naming + useful AHK scripts.

As for “note-taking” software per se (ie : software I use to just dump unclassified stuff)… well, I'm still using my note-taking software of choice (EverNote) BUT much less than I used to... and I tend to empty its database every week or so.

And... yes... Superboyac did a fantastic job with the note-taking software review, but it’s true that some of the description/analysis can seem a bit simplistic… but, hey, let’s admit that it would’ve been terribly hard to go into great details for each of the programs mentioned!!!! Not to mention, that this thread already contains details on many of the mentioned apps (if one is willing to search for them...)

Maybe you could offer a mini-review of TreeDBNotes? I’m sure people here would find it interesting.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #599 on:** September 15, 2007, 02:44 AM »

doublewitt - are you the author of TreeDBNotes