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What are people using these days, instead of Surfulater?

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app103:
I have come to a point where replacing my old Surfulater has become a dire necessity. :(

Recovering from a hard drive crash, where I have had to replace the drive and reinstall all my software, I can no longer activate my Surfulater license and the developer hasn't been very helpful. Currently, all my Surfulater knowledgebases are in Read Only mode. :(

I tried AllMyNotes, but I can't even copy and paste text from Surfulater without AMN crashing. Not to mention that AMN doesn't support tags, and never will, because the developer thinks that nobody should ever want both a folder hierarchy AND tags, and the only people that really want tags are former Evernote users, because that's all Evernote ever offered. (ahem! Surfulate supported both tags AND folder hierarchy, and I used both!)

As a cludgy work around, the AMN developer suggests adding plain text "tags" by just sticking keywords in [brackets] at the end of your notes, to give you something to search for later. But of course that won't give you the option to switch between using folder view vs tag view.

I supposed you can also use that plain text cludge with reference links and comments, but there are some other features I am in want of that are missing from AMN, such as being able to stick an item in a folder and paste a link to it in other folders, so you only have one single note to edit if you want to make changes, without having to hunt down and edit all copies in every folder. Also need the ability to use "see also" links, to link to other notes in the same database.

Most importantly, I need whatever I use to replace Surfulater to store everything locally, on my computer, with the ability to create separate databases for different subjects, with no "save to the cloud" crap. Some of my databases contain sensitive info that I don't ever want stored "in the cloud" and don't want my daughter to have to try to figure out my login, if anything should ever happen to me. I also don't want anything that requires a paid subscription, for the same reason. Then there's the "Ma.gnolia" reason for my not trusting "the cloud", as well as the "Google Reader" reason.

Evernote isn't an option because it stores everything "in the cloud". The only use I have for Evernote is syncing my shopping list from my desktop to my phone.

I just need a feature rich replacement for the no longer supported Surfulater, that's stable, actively developed, doesn't crash when I paste in text, uses separate databases, supports the features I mentioned above, no subscriptions, and keeps my data out of the cloud. (the closer it is to being a clone of Surfulater, the better)

Does anyone know of anything that has what I need? (I really just want my Surfulater back. )

cranioscopical:
FWIW, I moved to RightNote (link here)

nickodemos:
FWIW, I moved to RightNote (link here)
-cranioscopical (September 10, 2019, 09:47 PM)
--- End quote ---

Did you end up purchasing it or stay with the free version?

Downloaded and did a quick run through. It is time for some sleep so will look at it more tomorrow. Looks alot like treepad. Have you tried that and how does RightNote compare.

mwb1100:
I can no longer activate my Surfulater license and the developer hasn't been very helpful.
--- End quote ---

So Neville isn't resetting activations anymore?  That's bad news (and yet another lesson for all of us - me included -  about trusting server-based license activation).

I still use Surfulator, but I worry about getting stuck in the same situation that you're in.  Unfortunately, I haven't found anything that I've liked as a replacement - that might be because I haven't been looking very diligently.

What I have done is tried to put my new notes in a simple text file database that is organized using the file system (ie., directories).  The knowledge base is a git repository, so I can easily sync it between my machines, and I just use whatever search capability I have at hand (ie., xyplorer) to find things.

It's super klunky, and adding new information is much more difficult than Surfulator's capability for copying web pages.

The big disadvantages:

  - I don't get nice, easy replication of webpages, but often a copy/paste of the webpage text is good enough
  - I don't get a nice, easy to navigate listing (heirarchical or otherwiase). I could probably find something to help with this problem.
  - there's no real mobile access to my data

But I get these advantages:

  - I'll never be locked out of getting to my plain ascii data or updating it
  - I can use whatever cloud capability I want for syncing my data or making it available in the cloud (for example github or whatever git hosting service du jour replaces it)
  - I don't have to use the cloud if I don't want to

Unfortunately it's nowhere close to a feature rich replacement for Surfulator.  I still use Surfulator, and sometimes still add data to it.  But every time I do I also feel like I'm going to be sorry about that someday.  I wish SUL was still supported.

Jibz:
I am sorry to hear that app, I think this underlines the importance of having good export/import functionality so your data does not get locked in a proprietary format. I am a little surprised the Surfulater author apparently created a new app (Clibu) with no way to import from Surfulater?

For what it's worth, I moved from Evernote to CintaNotes, which is a lot more bare-bones, but works well for many of the type of notes I keep. Besides that I keep a development log in markdown in plain text files.

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