publishing notes to the net

[Steven Avery]

Hi,

Does a note system == web publishing system?
Why or why not?

Take an example.  I have a client where I would like to make it reasonably clear what I have done for them,  what are our contacts, how and why we do backup, what are the projects and a number of other items.  I've worked for them many years and if I am away, or less available than the current 20-minute-drive dropin, they have a good body of information.

I want them to be able to print out a page and keep it handy and then get to it very easily a year or 3 years later.    A while back I thought about Ubernote.  Not visual enough. Today I am working with the Notezilla memoboard paradigm.  Not bad.  At least for personal ad hoc note use, excellent. Not, however, for a professional sharing approach.

However, what if you have a Rightnote style tree-note that publishes to the web?  Then (allowing a suitable parking space) you can really make it easy for them to find and read and study. They don't have to pass around a manuel, or a data file, they can read and print and see screen shots right from the web. You might get some nice advantages over the memoboard, like an indexed tree.  And you do an update or addition, you simply republish.

That is simply one example. Dozens of others can be added.  I have Bible textual studies that might do well on this type of publishing, more user-reader effective than blog or forum writing, more time effective than special book-outliner preparation.  (Scrivener, Citavi, Outline4D and many friends.)  Hybrid-city.

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This thread hopes to build on some of the discussions in the following three threads, with special kudos to DC Peter and remote Paul, if I have identities right.

Some outliners and the features Unicode, search in the tree, website publishing
http://www.outliners...om/topics/viewt/5203

stickies Notezilla memoboard as full-blown personal note system
https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=40122.0

Paul J. Miller - I used to be undecided, but now I'm not so sure.
https://pauljmiller....oftware/note-taking/

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Here are some that are noted for publishing to the web.  Some give examples of finished websites.
Others are said to be somewhat quirky in actual publishing.  Apparently this is a specialty area.
Some have been mentioned extensively on DC, some very little.

TreePad - http://www.treepad.com/webgenerator/ - many sample sites
"comfortable feature to create a website... no Unicode support" - Peter

Memobook http://www.memo-book.../en/overview-en.html
" possibility to export as a website with better results than MyInfo concerning the line spacing...  silly and unnecessary zoom..  Memo Book gave me the impression that the web version corresponds exactly with the “original” version." - Peter
Any comments on the zoom?

MyInfo - http://www.milenix.com/myinfo  - best on unicode
"easily and without problems but formatting is not fully retained in the web version" - Peter
Millenix has a forum, so here is a discussion about modifying .css either before or after export.
http://forums.mileni...c.php?f=1&t=4556

MyBase, UltraRecall and Web Idea Trea are also in the mix, with nuance. "

I think it would be good to see which program is actually succeeding in helping people make production websites.

Treepad may be the leader.
"Examples of Websites created with TreePad"
http://www.treepad.com/webgenerator/

"WIT user's manual, which has entirely been designed and built with WIT."
http://www.webideatr...u-en/text/index.html
"too complicated .. " Peter

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Mynoteskeeper - http://www.mynoteskeeper.com/

2/10/2015 correction -- this one does not belong

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Who else is solid in this mix?
Which one should I use (currently "none of the above" are in my toolkit.)
Is this the right way to go? Why or why not?

Anybody want to compare the finished products as well?
Which in some cases you might want to tweak.

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Steven

[IainB]

What I have occasionally done for this sort of thing is to publish the notes as HTML pages hosted on Google Drive, and given the client a shared link to it (anyone with the link can view/download). You could give them edit/write access too, if you wanted.
I am not sure as I have not tried it, but I guess you could do this using other Cloud Storage Services too - e.g., such as OneDrive.

[Steven Avery]

We have done that type of thing with another business/client.  It works well for individual documents.  The thing is that I don't think and refresh and update in a document format, I want a little tree and/or tab mentality in preparation for organization.  When you have twenty documents on Google Drive it is a bit unwieldy to the reader as well as to the writer/updater.  The reader can especially lose interest.

Maybe Google Docs or Microsoft Word has some such features (or would that be Microsoft Publisher or Google Web Doodads?) but overall the web note paradigm we have gotten used to from Keynote and then Rightnote is rather comfy. And I want to retain some sort of similar organizational overview.  

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btw, in some cases I might actually use a web picture snap from Notezilla as part of a note page in TreePad, etc.
Again you run into the desire to avoid the white space problem.

Steven

[rjbull]

Some of these programs have a freely-distributable viewer, and/or can compile a note tree to an EXE file: TreePad is a notable example.  I'd rather have the viewer than the EXE owing to UAC, installation permissions, etc., but either gives an alternative way of distributing canned text.

[dr_andus]

Desktop wikis might be another option (after all the notes are already linked, like a website's pages). E.g. here is a website created and maintained using ConnectedText: Global Sourcebook for International Data Management

[Steven Avery]

The question for me was whether I had to write in markdown rather than RTF for ConnectedText.  
Am I taking a dilettante approach?  Are there wiki's with RTF?

The fellow Paul ended up liking Connected Text, and as a Wiki it is inherently web-enablable.
They claim that markdown is similar effort. I am skeptical.  Plus, I am very happy with RTF writing.

Steven

[app103]

I am going to have to recommend Trello again, for this one. The ability to invite people to share a board you have created covers this usage, as well as giving them the ability to ask questions and comment on notes.

[conceptworld]

Thanks for mentioning Notezilla.

How about looking for an online mind-map solution with advance text formatting etc?

[dr_andus]

The question for me was whether I had to write in markdown rather than RTF for ConnectedText. 
Am I taking a dilettante approach?  Are there wiki's with RTF?

-Steven Avery (February 10, 2015, 06:16 PM)

If you don't want to get involved with wiki markup, Google Sites could be another option for a simple website.

[NW]

A few years ago I used PersonalBrain, trying both embedded Webbrain and exported sitebrain, to publish my website. Eventually deciding the navigation was too quirky for the average website visitor - confirmed when TheBrain themselves swapped to a more conventional website. I occurred to me at the time that the most obvious solution would be to export to XML from PB and then run a script on the XML to generate a website. I hadn't the time, or inclination, to look into the scripting.

My thinking was that the items posted to my website are really a subset of the items within my notes database.

Since then I have revisited the subject a few times - most recently over the Christmas holidays. My conclusion was that either ConnectedText or MyInfo where probably the best options if desktop/windows was the primary use case. As I now tend to use an iPad more than a desktop, I didn't follow up on that research. If either come up on Bits then I might explore further.

These days I use OneNote as my cross platform note database and there is an older web export plug-in for OneNote, but the output format is too far removed from a standard website.

[Steven Avery]

I would like to like Google Sites.  Sometimes it seems to be awkward by the Google signon motif.  I tried to inaugurate Google Sites for PureBible, one of my more social Gmail addies.  When I went in there, and asked to set up google sites, it dropped me out to :

"Sign into a different account to access Google Admin."

This google sign-on merry-go-round is one concern.  And I see that for building a site they fall back on partnerships with Weebly and Wix, which would incorporate their weaknesses and limitations.

The idea is good. Have a site where your largely google docs and related elements can feel at home, hosted by google or your own domain. With solid navigation for the visitor.  So if you have 20 documents, you at least quickly have a nice front page discussing each one.  I'm just not sure that practically it will be good.  If anyone has a "Google Sites" site that they want to share, to view, that might help.

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MyInfo is definitely a possibility. I wonder if there are any sites up, available, that could be compared to what we see in the url above from Treepad. ConnectedText I will pass on unless it incorporates editing in RTF.  From the products above, I added some notes, but still, other than Treepad, there seems to be a dearth of actual developed websites up and running using the tools.  Even for the limited applications like manuals and catalogs, where they should shine.

On Myinfo, I even have a license from 2012, ver 6, which I think is current to the latest release. So I can do a download without pressure.  At the time I was not thinking pub to web. Apparently, though, you will want to do some format tweaking, but that could be acceptable.  

OneNote, Evernote, Wiznote just never quite caught my interest. 

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Somehow my mind has never wrapped around being brain mapped. I'd rather have a memoboard (Notezilla, Listhings) that fills the note need at the same time that it acts as a sort of mapper by the tree and board layout.

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I do have an Airpad, and I like using it for Skype, Facebook, browsing, traffic and maps and various apps.  However, I can't see using it for notes with flavor and structure, or publishing or documents.  Maybe I am missing something.  Closer would be one of the Androids, a big Samsung tablet with a keyboard (quiet nice) and a wireless mouse. Also possible in this genre is the Chromebook.  While Ipad does not really support a mouse on the pixel level and I really don't intend to learn finger-pinching as a writing method.  Once again, I may be missing something.

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On the tablets, it seems like they make good extensions to an AT&T cell phone family plane.  I have been able to add the small LGs or Samsungs for about $10/month for two years (a good price for airtime, this is part of a shared data plan) with little or no cost for the actual hardware, which is owned officially by you after the 2 years.  Apparently they had one special with a big one for only $100, same basic idea. What's good there is that the modest incremental cost means that you don't have to use it a lot.  Saved me $15 parking in NYC the other day, when I quickly downloaded a parking garage app while at a traffic light!  (Just be careful not to get a $200 cell phone ticket, with possible points.)

Steven