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General brainstorming for Note-taking software

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Dormouse:
There's a twofold problem with using structured folders as your system.

The first is that everything needs to be put somewhere when created (else you have a holding folder that you work on intermittently) and this sort of decision & typing a name etc is more work than giving a tag.

The second is that everything fits singularly in a fixed hierarchy. So, only one way to categorise. Whereas, it's easy to add two or three or more tags if you want in a tagging/keyword system.

Not bothering with a structure at all might be effective if the search engine does everything you want.

Personally, I'm finding it easier to have everything of a type within a program rather than opening files all the time.

edbro:
My thinking is that with a decent desktop search, tags become less important. The directory structure is not even necessary, it just appeals to my anal retentive side.

Armando:
If you've got a good naming scheme, directories are not that important, but they can be useful if you want to temporarily  (or not) group some files for a project (or anything...). Although that grouping can also be achieved though specific naming.

urlwolf:
This is a left-field choice, but if you can cope with the fact that ctrl + x does not do 'cut' :)...

http://orgmode.org/

an emacs mode to get organized.
Good:

* plain text (portable as it can be).

* table support

* Free software

* reminders

* reuses the awesoma powa of emacs (it even has a browser)

* good word completion (hippie completion)

* outlining (supergood)
Bad

* Need to have 8.5 fingers in each hand play chords like in a church organ

* Need to forget shortcuts that took you years to learn and get new ones

jpm2112:
Has anybody tried just using Word Docs/Pdfs/Excel/text notes to store their information and using a desktop search engine to tie them all together? I am considering just using a well thought out directory structure and individual documents. The structured folders would do just as well as tagging would in say Evernote and it seems that Copernic would be able to get me just as quick access as any of the dedicated programs do.

The portability of this is very appealing to me. Not to mention that I don't have to have another program running in the background. It is just as easy to print a web page to pdf as it is to clip to OneNote or Evernote.
-edbro (April 30, 2008, 09:51 AM)
--- End quote ---

That's possible, but then, I would think it would be hard to organize things like that. Personally I prefer to have everything in one place, where I can link everything, and see everything together at the same time. That way, the information sticks better. That's just me though. If you have a search built into the program too, it goes even quicker.

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