Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion
General brainstorming for Note-taking software
urlwolf:
This is what I do now.
* I created an 'app' from the 'create new gdocs' link. It placed an icon on the desktop. I assigned a global shortcut to it. It takes 1-2 seconds to create a new note (a gdoc). Not as fast as simplenote or resophnotes, but it'll do
* Create a new gdocs when the inspiration comes, with the global shortcut
* Install syncdocs, so you have a local copy to every gdocs you create. Make sure that explorer index the syndocs folder. Then, when it's time to search, open an explorer window; the explorer search is damn fast, indexes the text, and the results are displayed with context; they are better than how onenote does it
Convoluted, but reliable, crossplatform, and full featured.
requires only easy to find software (your file manager, gdocs).
Everything works on and offline. (create new .doc instead of gdocs when offline)
The gdocs editor is way better than any of the native .doc editors (or rtf, or odt)
IainB:
This is what I do now.
* I created an 'app' from the 'create new gdocs' link. It placed an icon on the desktop. I assigned a global shortcut to it. It takes 1-2 seconds to create a new note (a gdoc). Not as fast as simplenote or resophnotes, but it'll do
* Create a new gdocs when the inspiration comes, with the global shortcut
* Install syncdocs, so you have a local copy to every gdocs you create. Make sure that explorer index the syndocs folder. Then, when it's time to search, open an explorer window; the explorer search is damn fast, indexes the text, and the results are displayed with context; they are better than how onenote does itConvoluted, but reliable, crossplatform, and full featured.
requires only easy to find software (your file manager, gdocs).
Everything works on and offline. (create new .doc instead of gdocs when offline)
The gdocs editor is way better than any of the native .doc editors (or rtf, or odt)
-urlwolf (May 12, 2013, 05:59 AM)
--- End quote ---
Interesting, I had been using a similar approach, but I stopped using SyncDocs as it seemed redundant (for my purposes) in the face of the latest incarnation of Gdrive (Google Drive). So I just settle for enabling Gdrive on my computer, and having my documents in a Gdrive folder on disk, where they are automatically synced up to the Cloud (Gdrive). Win7 indexes the documents for search.
Where you say "...the results are displayed with context; they are better than how onenote does it", do you mean how Win7 indexes the OneNotes Notebooks' content documents for search? I thought that worked the same - i.e., not differently, so neither better nor worse.
At any rate, that seemed to be the case when I was using OneNotes 2007, but since I have been using OneNotes 2013, I find the syncing of a NoteBook in almost real-time to the Cloud on SkyDrive works perfectly well, and it's still indexed by Win7.
urlwolf:
Where you say "...the results are displayed with context; they are better than how onenote does it", do you mean how Win7 indexes the OneNotes Notebooks' content documents for search? I thought that worked the same - i.e., not differently, so neither better nor worse.
--- End quote ---
By 'in context' I mean that you can see a few words before and after the match. Explorer does this. Onenote does not.
I've found a killer notetaker: wiznote. Chinesse-only website, but chrome does a decent work translating it.
It does many things right:
* Security. Notes encrypted locally before sending it to server-
* Multiplatform
* Very flexible interface (2/3 columns)
* Plugins
* Android app that beats even onenote
* Tables
* good paste from web, with url included next to the paste (like onenote)
* Can publish to blog straight (!)
* Very clean Html. Beats word, gdocs. No inline css.
* Word count. Press 'i' icon, then details
* Tagging
* Very flexible tree, you can disable showing notes in subfolders (Apple-styple only one level deep)
* Export is not an afterthought.
* Live search, highlights matches, shows small window of context (like rightnote, evernote). Beats onenote
* Web access (www.wiz.cn), in chinesse :)
* Autolink urls
* Beats any local wiki, no silly formatting, all wysiwyg
* Can add a note without opening main app (like cintanotes)
* Saves version history, for free (only in paid evernote)
* Can set paragraph line height (1.5x improves readability)
* Multi-search match highlights
And many things wrong:
* No autocapitalization of sentences
* Fonts kind of suck; no cleartype, no smoothing whatsoever. As horrible as office 2013.
* Have to get out of edit mode to search
* Changing from one note to another is slow (subsecond, but slow)
* Not easy to move with kb on the right side tree
* No spellcheck
The font problem is really worrying. If history is of any use, things that happen in office eventually spread to other apps (eg ribbon). Office 2013 ditches cleartype, and uses fonts that are unreadable on a desktop screen. I have an IFP 27' monitor, so I cannot blame it for bad quality (same as the ones apple use on the imac). The excuse is that the new font rendering is better for tablets.
It's scary how MS seems to be giving the finger to desktop users. Apple seems to be pissing off their more serious users too, moving tablet features into OSX. At the end anybody actually doing work and producing content will have to move to linux :)
Wiznote simply uses a component provided by MS for font rendering, and botches the entire font rendering thing.
But I still think I'll use it.
IainB:
^^ Hey! Thankyou. Very interesting - WizNote.
Not sure whether this is the same thing I had seen a long time back, via here: http://www.wiznotes.com/ (Wiznotes 4)
But it looks different anyway (different versions too) to the Chinese website: http://www.wiz.cn/
I downloaded and installed the FREE Chinese one (WizNote v3.3.25), installed the Firefox add-on for it, and used Google Translate to get the Help files into English. The add-on doesn't seem to work too well, but the moveable auto-hide toolbar works fine (redolent of the old MS Office toolbar).
It really is superb. :Thmbsup:
Seems to have something in common with OneNote as well.
Still exploring it...
urlwolf:
A pity that the fonts are such a clusterfuck. I do hope windows 8.1 does something about this grayscale hinting business, because it's pitiful. MS was 3rd in font clarity behind Apple and linux with cleartype, and now they managed to widen the gap with their cleartype replacement. Astounding.
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