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I'm thinking of going primitive, with discursion into zettelkasten

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Dormouse:
Because of the issues mentioned in recent topics. OneNote changing; Surfulator expiring; Evernote ???ing. And everything always changing or disappearing. I'd seen a number of strange folks switching to Markdown and keeping everything in plain text notes, and I'm starting to think they may not be so strange.

I want to control what stuff is local and what is on the net. I want to control access. I want to be able to use my stuff on Linux, Android, iOS. Maybe even Mac. I want to be able to work on all my devices. I don't want my workflows constantly disrupted by software updates or bugs. I  might, if I'm very very lucky, want to retrieve it in 40 years time. At some point I may not have the capacity to change; I hope that point hasn't arrived yet, but now is a better bet than next year.

So it seems to me that I could, maybe, work quite well with files, plain text or not. Names including a date stamp. I'd need a powerful text search ability, preferably with the ability to a batch adding or changing of text (Powergrep?, Textpipe?). I might also need a file renamer to add the date/time stamp so each file name is unique. I'm not sure about tagging; text tags inside the file would be less vulnerable. If I wanted to use another program to work on some of the files, I could just copy it in.

I was also wondering whether it was worth seeing what a zettelkasten methodology might to for my workflows, and to some extent that triggered my thinking about the switch above.

superboyac:
there is a product that will help you do this, i believe it is AM-notebook.
https://www.aignes.com/notebook.htm

superboyac:
but i do not think you have to go there yet (I'm in the same boat)

if onenote really got bad, i'd go back to RightNote.  Rightnote developer does not seem like the type to abandon the software/users, and even if he did, he seems like he would make exporting etc nice for his customers.

Dormouse:
I have Rightnote. Lifetime licence.
I think I had AM-Notebook at one time.

The problem with both is that the stuff is in the programs, they're Windows only and not accessible from elsewhere. I appreciate the advantage of database based programs, which is why I have stuck with them and tired and bought so many. And I don't discount using them. But I'm considering having them only for an active use rather than stuff in general.

With files, I can use virtually any program to create them, and to modify them; I can use them on all devices, access them from the internet and never have to worry about import or export. Feels as if it is worth an experiment. Not that I would export everything immediately and do a switch. I'd just start using a new system and take stuff from older programs as I needed to work with it.

I'd have to say, just looking at the features, that AM-Notebook has come a long way since I last looked at it.

Dormouse:
One other thought I had, triggered by some zettelkasten reading, was the possibility of being more productive if I was working with fewer programs and more simply focused on files and links. Working on files, it's easy to switch to a different program for a particular feature (and back again) without disruption. Trying to do that with database programs is definitely not like that. It leads to doing one set of things in one program and another in another etc. And there's permanent feature dissatisfaction.

I don't know. I always regarded it as an odd and obviously inefficient approach. But now I'm not quite so sure.

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