Author Topic: General brainstorming for Note-taking software (Read 895127 times)

Dormouse · « **Reply #625 on:** November 02, 2007, 01:06 PM »

Signed in and tried to download sqlnotes, but all I get is You Do Not Have Permission To View The Requested File

tomos · « **Reply #626 on:** November 02, 2007, 01:50 PM »

maybe it's being updated $:-\$

tomos · « **Reply #627 on:** November 02, 2007, 01:53 PM »

Signed in and tried to download sqlnotes, but all I get is You Do Not Have Permission To View The Requested File
-Dormouse (November 02, 2007, 01:06 PM)

although I tried just now & no problem

Armando · « **Reply #628 on:** November 02, 2007, 01:54 PM »

Just tried it and I'm not having any problem.

PPLandry · « **Reply #629 on:** November 02, 2007, 02:19 PM »

Signed in and tried to download sqlnotes, but all I get is You Do Not Have Permission To View The Requested File
-Dormouse (November 02, 2007, 01:06 PM)

If you are still having problems, I can send it to you by email.

Dormouse · « **Reply #630 on:** November 02, 2007, 05:24 PM »

If you are still having problems, I can send it to you by email.
-PPLandry (November 02, 2007, 02:19 PM)

Thanks very much for the offer. Eventually wondered if it might be an Opera issue and switched to Firefox and that worked. Means your site is not completely compatible with Opera. At least I did not have to resort to ie.

Steven Avery · « **Reply #631 on:** November 03, 2007, 01:35 PM »

Hi Folks,

(This post did not fare well on my own review, so it is enhanced the next day, going over the full thread ! - Just offering some thoughts from a light notes user, planning a bit more organizing and writing.)

Good thread.

I am always looking for a good note software, with some color and RTF, ala Keynote,
which I use on one machine, in a simple note and tab and search and print manner. The speed and simplicity has always been great and I probably haven't used tons of features, like the virtual links mentioned in the thread.

On freebies, reading above and a little elsewhere, on the second puter I have decided to try Neomem and TreeDBNotes . The discussions were very helpful, and they probably can give me the basic functionality quite nicely.

Usually I avoid the free version of paid products (too crippled) but apparently TreeDB is an exception, lacking mainly the contact manager (which I have in Time & Chaos anyway and not in Keynote) and lacking advanced features, which is fine. Hmm.. there is an ebook feature in the paid version that might be helpful. And since the paid version price is reasonable it is definitely worth the effort.

Apparently Evernote is also ok then as a potential freebie, that could expand to paid. I have used Powermarks (bookmark manager) as a pseudo-Pim and pseudo-Reference master, since its keyword metaphor is so strong. Perhaps, from the thread, this is an EverNote-type strength as well ?

On paid products my interest in most piqued in trying MyBase - and returning for more of Surfulater (which I had not considered in this genre, I would like to find its niche, I do have a reggie) . Also the Zoot possibility (despite the priceyness) should be considered now that they have 32-bit and .rtf. MyInfo might deserve honorable mention if I really have time to play.

I have some moderate writing-organizing planned, and Zoot may work the best for that. Gathering text from places, augmenting with my thoughts and writings, interrelating, and then putting it together for articles of a couple of pages (Bible themes, mainly, especially the "Johannine Comma" is planned). A lot of the source material comes from Google books and similars and web pages.

Other products that had their own cachet or niche potential are AceText and the Wiki-ish products. I also found the NoteCase Open Source / NoteCase Pro products and NotesBrowser to be of some note, in my second or third tier of consideration. (There are about seven tiers

).

=============================================

Here are four that have been little mentioned on DonationCoder, some of which may deserve space in Roundup #2, with the emphasis pretty much purely on notetakers.

Perhaps an inclusion, at least on the side, of the page :

Notetaking Software Roundup #1
https://www.donation....625;num_replies=630

My Notes Center (2006)
http://www.mynotescenter.com/

My Notes Keeper (2007) - (mentioned on p. 15)
http://www.mynoteskeeper.com/

Treepad Pro (referenced, but not in the review, the original Keynote alternative)
http://www.treepad.com/treepadplus/

Whizfolders (has been a good program, with solid support from Sanjay in India)
http://whizfolders.com/

However none of these are freeware.

The top two are recent entries and seem sensible so could be sleepers, or could be pablum. Since they are newish it is hard to find a good review or even discussion by snapfiles or fileforum or Cnet users. Whizfolders has lacked a tab methodology, leaving windows open a bit freely, and Treepad should be included in consideration at least for longevity :-) .

Sanjay of Whizfolders very nicely once sent me my lost-in-space registration number after a gap of some years of non-contact. I always consider giving them a better go-try.

=================================================

Shalom,
Steven Avery
Queens, NY

urlwolf · « **Reply #632 on:** November 23, 2007, 02:20 PM »

Here's yey another one:
http://www.debriefnotes.com/

free, $29, and $39 versions.

It's based on the index card idea, seems to be good for bibliography management (not as good as endNote, no interaction with word). Does contacts, reading lists , etc

Outliner seems pretty good.

Othalian · « **Reply #633 on:** December 02, 2007, 06:12 AM »

Hi All,

This may have been mentioned before to sorry if it has. Have a look here http://www.mind-mapping.org/ and feast your eyes on a massive list of note-taking software, knowledge management and information organising software. Some of it is free and some commercial. I hope this helps.

Regards

Othalian

superboyac · « **Reply #634 on:** December 03, 2007, 10:42 AM »

Hi All,

This may have been mentioned before to sorry if it has. Have a look here http://www.mind-mapping.org/ and feast your eyes on a massive list of note-taking software, knowledge management and information organising software. Some of it is free and some commercial. I hope this helps.

Regards

Othalian
-Othalian (December 02, 2007, 06:12 AM)

Awesome list! Wow, look at all the options, that's ridiculous. Maybe there's something better than MindManager out there for Mind Maps. Sometimes, I feel like MindManager is lacking certain things, but the only other one I was aware of was Freemind, which is worse (although free).

Armando · « **Reply #635 on:** December 03, 2007, 12:16 PM »

IMO the biggest missing aspect of most mind mapping software is the ability to also draw "Concept maps". Like what VUE does : http://vue.uit.tufts.edu/. It's a completely different way of working.

Othalian · « **Reply #636 on:** December 03, 2007, 01:32 PM »

Hi,

You can find concept mapping software from the link I posted above, but if you don't wish to trawl through all of the site to find what you are after then try here: http://en.wikipedia....ept_mapping_software.

The one that I recommend is Compendium which can be found here: http://www.compendiuminstitute.org/ and is supplied by the Open University here in the Uk for free.

Hope this helps.

Regards

Othalian

Armando · « **Reply #637 on:** December 03, 2007, 02:29 PM »

Thanks! I didn't know about Compendium.
But I still do think that big players like MindManager should become more flexible and open themselves to concept mapping.

superboyac · « **Reply #638 on:** December 05, 2007, 03:58 PM »

I've been playing with SQLNotes a little more seriously the past two weeks. I think this is going to be a very revolutionary program. I was never an Ecco user, so maybe that's why it feels so new and fresh to me, but even so, this program is going to be very powerful. As a notetaker, it's not really what you expect (at least I didn't), but once I understood how the program works, it really can function perfectly well as a notetaker. Furthermore, it could do tons of other things, but not in a Ultra Recall or Info Select sort of way where they just bundle a whole bunch of different features into one program. In SQLNotes, everything is essentially one database, and the user controls how the information is displayed. In other words, it allows you to create your own notetaking program just the way you want it. It's very powerful, very flexible, and unique (based on Ecco).

I'm excited about the program and it's official release (it's beta right now). Another great thing about it is the author is very nice, very active with it's development, and there's no danger of losing your data in the future because of a proprietary format, because all of the data can be exported to a general format (I don't know exactly what, but it's true).

Armando · « **Reply #639 on:** December 05, 2007, 06:33 PM »

Go SQLNotes ! GO!

I'm not sure if it's fair to say that UltraRecall and InfoSelect "just bundle a whole bunch of different features into one program" though

...

Yes, SQLNotes really follows in the footsteps of ECCO and and it should also be noted that it’S actually not *that* far from other PIMS like Outlook, Achieve Planner (very "grid oriented"), etc : they all use grids.

what makes SQLNotes special, is its great flexibility (in comparison Achieve Planner is stiff) : almost anything can be organized with it. Of course, if your need more structure, this flexibility can also be a problem. (One way to easily resolve this problem would be to install (through download) templates for different projects, something that *already* seems pretty easy to do.)

The fact that data is NOT prisoner of a proprietary format cannot be emphasized enough...

(BTW : to be as good a "note taker" as... I don't know... EverNote, it should be extremely fast and painless to insert notes and web clips. Those clips should have an automatic reference (web page address, etc.) "attached" to them, + instant creation date and "automatic title", etc. Everything else is already there in SQLNotes : tagging, etc.)

superboyac · « **Reply #640 on:** December 05, 2007, 07:11 PM »

Yeah, I have to agree about Evernote still being very useful for dumping notes into. you just can't beat it's search and speed for finding. Of course, Evernote's weakness is SQLNotes' strength: organization. It's difficult to organize (but very easy to find) content with Evernote and vice-versa for SQL. But, at the rate Pierre is developing SQL, who knows what's in store there.

I just love how easy it is to search inside evernote, so fast! And it actively highlights and has search-as-you-type (see my blog). That's awesome.

PPLandry · « **Reply #641 on:** December 05, 2007, 08:44 PM »

Armando wrote:

(BTW : to be as good a "note taker" as... I don't know... EverNote, it should be extremely fast and painless to insert notes and web clips. Those clips should have an automatic reference (web page address, etc.) "attached" to them, + instant creation date and "automatic title", etc. Everything else is already there in SQLNotes : tagging, etc.)

You are quite right that this aspect of SQLNotes does need improvements It should be as simple as: Select text in your browser > right-click > Send as a new item, or > Append to the current item

@ superboyac and Armando: Thank you both for such encouraging words.

@ superboyac: The SQLNotes grid does have a search-as-you-type mode. It is called auto-search. Check it out! Also Filter-as-you-type is coming soon

superboyac · « **Reply #642 on:** December 06, 2007, 10:32 AM »

You are quite right that this aspect of SQLNotes does need improvements It should be as simple as: Select text in your browser > right-click > Send as a new item, or > Append to the current item

@ superboyac and Armando: Thank you both for such encouraging words.

@ superboyac: The SQLNotes grid does have a search-as-you-type mode. It is called auto-search. Check it out! Also Filter-as-you-type is coming soon
-PPLandry (December 05, 2007, 08:44 PM)

The auto-search is cool. The difference with Evernote's search is that evernote will search all text in the database, not just the first word like the auto-search seems to. Also, as each letter is typed in evernote, any item (note, in their case) that doesn't match the search disappears from the list, so all that is left is a short list of matching items with all the matching terms highlighted. If your auto-search gets to this level, it would be amazing. Maybe that's what your filter-as-you-type will do, I'm not sure.

It's a little more complicated with SQL because there are so many more things to search. In evernote, there's just the notes. With SQL, there's going to be all the fields, the different grids, the html pane. So will a filter-as-you-type search all of those things? Or just the fields? Ideally, you can customize how the filter works.

PPLandry · « **Reply #643 on:** December 06, 2007, 10:44 AM »

Filter-as-you-type will filter the focused grid field. But since you can display any field in the grid, that means that you can filter live any one field. To filter on many fields, the other methods will work (source, filter, alpha-filter, date-filter, column filter)

That said, I'm not pretending that SQLNotes auto-search matches Evernote's. I just wanted to point to you that feature, in case you hadn't seen it. Evernotes search is excellent and reminds me of my old DOS InfoSelect (simple but effective). The Auto-filter will be an incremental improvement.:

superboyac · « **Reply #644 on:** December 06, 2007, 12:44 PM »

Thanks for the info, Pierre. That looks amazing. Truthfully, I don't expect SQL to match Evernote just because SQL has so many more things to search. Basically, Evernote is searching its database which consists of just notes (which would be analogous to the HTML pane content in SQL). But besides the HTML pane, SQL also has data in fields, multiple grids, further complicated by the fact that everything is organized into an outline with levels. Evernote basically has one level of just notes.
So, the searching can't be the same for the two. However, I think you are doing an excellent job coming up with innovative ways to search in SQL.

Also, SQL is so flexible, I can make a grid and call it "Evernote-replacement", and just dump notes in it without organizing them (all top level). Then I can use your filter as you type to find anything in there. So that one grid will essentially act like Evernote. Will the filter-as-you-type be able to search the html pane?

PPLandry · « **Reply #645 on:** December 06, 2007, 12:53 PM »

>Will the filter-as-you-type be able to search the html pane?

The HTML pane uses a field just like all others (ItemHTML, a text field), but with a specialized editor. So yes it will work. A related field is ItemHTMLText which contains the text part of the HTML (without all the markup). I recommend using that one for searching since formatting markup will not get in the way.

superboyac · « **Reply #646 on:** December 06, 2007, 12:59 PM »

>Will the filter-as-you-type be able to search the html pane?

The HTML pane uses a field just like all others (ItemHTML, a text field), but with a specialized editor. So yes it will work. A related field is ItemHTMLText which contains the text part of the HTML (without all the markup). I recommend using that one for searching since formatting markup will not get in the way.
-PPLandry (December 06, 2007, 12:53 PM)

Great! That means I can use SQL as an Evernote replacement if I want. This program continues to amaze me.

PPLandry · « **Reply #647 on:** December 06, 2007, 01:07 PM »

Great! There are a few things missing to be an Evernote replacement, one of which is IE and FF (and hopefully Opera) right-click menu to copy content...

Does anyone at DC know how to do that? Initial search of the web did not give much...

superboyac · « **Reply #648 on:** December 06, 2007, 01:17 PM »

I can't answer that since I don't know anything about programming. You'd probably have to make a FF extension like evernote does. I will say one thing, Evernotes web-clipping extension is amazingly accurate. A lot of webclipping programs are not very accurate, but Evernote does it right pretty much every time.

PPLandry · « **Reply #649 on:** December 06, 2007, 01:35 PM »

One reason why many programs have inaccurate clipping (unlike Evernote) is that these use an RTF editor, not an HTML editor and the conversion from HTML to RTF is very problematic. SQLNotes uses a native HTML Editor so I expect good results. Grabbing this DC page for example looks identical except for missing borders (quick tweak of the html code fixed it) and font sizes (which most likely reference styles sheets)

It should also be possible to clip in MHT (or EML) format which would also clip images and styles (and not simply reference them)