NEWS: Onfolio Acquired by Microsoft
New release of Onfolio free in the Windows Live Toolbar
March 8th, 2006, Microsoft announces the acquisition of Onfolio and the release of a new version of Onfolio with the Windows Live Toolbar.

It is an add-in for the Windows Live Toolbar, which you can download from the Windows Live Toolbar download site.

Probably free because it's labelled a beta.

I don't remember seeing this mentioned anywhere and I did a search that came up empty....so don't give me greif if you've talked about this 3 billion times

WikiPad is an interesting creature: http://www.jhorman.org/wikidPad/

...

IMO Wiki's are a good way to present and share information but writing content leaves something to be desired with WikiWords and CamelCase etc.

Another client side Wiki is TiddlyWiki http://www.tiddlywiki.com/ which has spawned lots of variations.

Some good reading on Wiki's includes:
http://www.alittlemadness.com/?p=5 and all the article comments and the follow up articles: http://www.alittlemadness.com/?p=6 and http://www.alittlemadness.com/?p=8

Every time I come here I get introduced to something I have not seen before.  Thanks web_stalker for the great referrals.  I will try them out and report back.

Yeah, there's lots of good information in this thread.  There are a few other long threads on this subject around the internet also, but this is the only one that looks at the genre in general, the other ones are more specific to a certain software.

John Buckham's been mentioned here a couple of times, since he has a webpage summarizing the different outliners available (although it's a bit dated).  I recently tried Jot+ which he calls the best two-pane outliner, but it's nothing special.  It's standard stuff, tree-heirarchy, maybe it's a bit more user-friendly than some others, but there are no ground-breaking features there.  Mybase really is the best in that category that I've seen so far, it wipes the floor with Jot+.

Here's something I want to do when I have the time, put together a graphic that takes the best parts of the existing elite notetaking programs, and combine them into one perfect notetaking utility.  Kind of like Frankenote, or "The Ultimate Notetaker", or "The Amalgamation" (I'm not even sure if that's a real word).  I'd like to do that someday, but I can't commit to it yet, and mouser is still waiting for me to do the addressbook review.  I wish I had a secretary to do my non work related tasks.

I mostly agree with Jim, except for OneNote's shortcomings. It's a great program in so many ways, and Microsoft will push it because it's also a great tablet app — how many of those are around? I like OneNote because of its flawless outlining abilities and its ability to export its content to readable, formatted text in other programs. That's very rare, and saves a ton of time. If I'm correct, I think OneNote is the only original program Microsoft has created since 1997 (not counting InfoPath).

I mostly agree with Jim, except for OneNote's shortcomings. It's a great program in so many ways,

Hmmm...  zridling, as arch-apostle for OneNote, how about your asking Microsoft for a DC discount? 

We may have talked about this before... it seems that "Note-taking" has a couple of different meanings.

Zaine mentioned outlining capabilities and that seems like a good thing for taking notes on purpose....like at a meeting or training session.

I've seen a lot of other comments regarding grabbing a bit (byte) of information to tuck away for later -- easy -- retrieval.  We're looking for a dumping ground for information so we can "put this somewhere" and still find it when it suddenly becomes important again.

Since I assume meetings notes might fall into the same category, what we really need is a dumping ground that has two distinct interfaces.  1 for the one-note type, on-purpose stuff and 1 for the Evernote, grab-this-stuff-and-remember-where-it-came-from type.

In both cases, we want to be able to find the information by searching (keyword, date, category), timeline, and some sort of tree view.

Does that sound about right?

I have to chime in on OneNote...

jimdoria's got me curious once again about this program.  I got a free copy from Microsoft a couple of years ago, and I've only fiddled with it a little.  It's definitely an interesting program and has gotten a lot of love from even the most hardcore MS haters, so there's something to be said about that.  jimdoria's singled out presentation as the issue to focus on in these programs.  I'd have to disagree with that somewhat, but I understand his point.  Presentation is a broad term that can include aspects of user interface and organization ability, and probably other things.  I can see that he was focusing primarily on OneNote's ability to just plaster information all over the desktop of the program, which is definitely a cool and unique feature.  For myself, I haven't given that a fair try yet, and when I did try it, I didn't like it because I like the usual style where I can only see one note at a time, it's just easier for me to think about that way.  But, obviously, there is an advantage to seeing multiple notes all at once, and programs like OneNote, Evernote, and Surfulater have implemented this to a varying degree.  Personally, I'm not a big fan, but others love it to death.  In the case of Evernote and Surfulater, I don't like the whole scroll system of just putting the notes one after each other.  Surfulater actually does it better because it still has the virtual tree on the left, so if you don't want to scroll, you can click on the note title in the tree (like a normal tree heirarchy program) and the view will jump directly to that note.  That being the case, Evernote's search feature is hands down the best around, so finding anything is not really a problem.  Then there's Onenote, which doesn't do either of these things well, but it does put all the notes visible in a freeform way, not a scroll.

it's mind boggling to try to figure out which is the best way to do it, and it's all very subjective.  The best to do is to take the best parts of each program and combine them into the ultimate notetaking program, like I mentioned before.  Ideally, the user can decide which "mode" he wants the information presented in and all the modes are available in the same program.  How cool would that be!

@Rover:
One Note does the grab-and-tuck-away thing pretty well, too. You can paste in text from a website, and it will automatically include a hyperlink back to the site you grabbed it from. It also retains much of the formatting. Of course, this is all assuming you're using Internet Explorer. If you try it using Firefox, the text just comes out as:

(kidding... sort of.)

@Superboyac
I think your post makes a very important point. It is VERY subjective. On another board I frequent, there was a discussion about 3-D modelling software and how many different titles and ways of working there are. Someone commented that it was the most personalized kind of software - that there was no "works best for everyone" solution.

I think note taking of software has the same issue. If the software is supposed to model, at some level, the way you think, then there can't be a one-size-fits-all answer, because people think very differently. You wouldn't expect an electrical engineer and a performance artist to have the same thought processes or approach to their work.

So it seems to me that the "ultimate" note taking software either can't exist, or would have to be some kind of super-morphing application, with the user taking a hand in the construction (or selection) of the UI. Perhaps this would look like some kind of free-text database back-end coupled with a dead-simple GUI builder front end that shipped with a number of common GUI configurations out of the box. Maybe you'd start out with pages or tabs (a la KeyNote or OneNote) but you could choose a default UI for each one - the "tree on the left" UI, the "sticky notes" UI, the "scrolling column" UI, the "cloud of tags" (del.icio.us) UI, etc. Then you could tweak the templates, mix and match, or construct your own from scratch.

It would be a pretty major project. Programmatically, though, it shouldn't be impossible. Essentially, you are dealing with two different types of objects that interact with the database. Let's call them "views." You'd need "content" views which show individual database items, and "aggregator" views which show high-level groups of items. There would be a number of these - a tree view, a list view, a tags-only view, a "canvas" view (for those sticky notes), etc. Then you'd need the underlying structure to position and link the views in the application window.

Data interchange is the other bugbear of this project. Ideally, you would want Google Desktop to work with it, because no matter how good it is, you're always going to have some of your data stored elsewhere - in Word files, in presentations, in e-mail, etc. A closed search system would be less than optimal. It should play well with others.

Good point superboyac... it is a concise summary of what I was thinking.  Of course, I rambled more!  But, the idea of having one database of info allowing multiple views is the key to this program.  I would expand your list to block diagrams and flowcharts.  I am working on a project right now (I'm an EE as well) where I wish I could combine Excel, AutoCAD, and Keynote into one program.  Oh well... maybe one day!

Kevin

There yet? I don't know, do you have a shipping version ready? 

There is precedent, of course, superboyac. (Does that mean one should never do something unprecedented?) The UI idea isn't actually all that far from something like the Visual Studio.NET interface, where you can dock multiple panes in different parts of the application window. And I didn't know you were an EE, though I'm not too surprised. I just threw it out because of the reputation of engineers to be very focused, logical and orderly in their thinking. And performance artist I just chose as a kind of opposite: expansive, intuitive and nonlinear in theirs.

At its barest level, the Frankenote UI would be something like a blank canvas. But since that's too scary for a lot of folks, ideally you'd have the idea of templates incorporated into the product. When you created a new page, you'd be given a choice of which template to base it on, one of which would be the blank canvas. Others would be templates analogous to the some of the UIs of existing apps. So you could have an "outlook" template, a "one note" template, an "evernote" template, etc. Since they're just pre-defined layouts, they would be immediately usable but also immediately tweakable.

A "note" should be able to store any kind of content, almost like a Word document. I can see the need for a few basic note types: formatted text, bitmap graphic, vector graphic. There would probably be a few specialized sub-classes of these, too. Everything else is a view. The trick would be this: as soon as a note is called on to contain more than just formatted text, it silently and transparently changes itself into a view!

So you’re typing away, and you decide to paste in a picture. Behind the scenes, the text becomes its own note and the "note" you were working with becomes an aggregator view containing your original text note and your pasted picture. If you continue typing text under the picture, that text becomes (internally) a third text note displayed in the view, but stored separately behind the scenes. This is all invisible to the user. As far as they are concerned, the "note" consists of text-picture-text. They will never see it represented in any other form.

Inside a view, there can be notes, other views and links. Views need a killer memory as to how they are constructed. Part of a view is its query, or what database items it uses to build itself. Part of it is its formatting rules. Part of it is its nesting rules (what kind of view can I be inside? What kinds can be inside me?) And part of it is its collection of links.

There are two types of links: hard and soft. Hard links are created and maintained by the system. Soft links are user-configurable. Take the above example of a text-picture-text note. The links in that view are hard links. The user never knows that it is actually a view - to them it is just a single note and they work with it as such. But to the program, it's a view with hard links to the two text notes and the bitmap note. Another example of hard links is a table. The table is really just an aggregation of notes (each cell is a note) with hard links that keep them together in the table layout. When you paste Excel data into Frankenote, the program converts it into a native table view and embeds that view in your current note, just like it handled the picture.

Soft links are used by the user to "wire up" the UI. Suppose you start with a blank canvas. You add a tree view - which is a type of aggregator. Now you have a tree view inside a canvas view. The tree view has some default contents - lets say it shows a node for every note in the database (and it shows what the USER considers "notes" - pure notes and views that contain only hard links.) Those tree nodes are notes linked to the view by a soft link. The user could change the soft link and have the tree show only the notes that were created in the last week, or only the picture notes, or whatever. (The notes appear as tree nodes because a tree view's formatting rules specify that this is how it displays the notes it contains - it takes their "title" attribute, assigns an icon based on some criteria, and creates a hierarchy based on some other criteria.)

Now you want to be able to select a node in the tree and view it in the canvas. So at the top right corner of the tree view is a small icon that looks like an electrical plug. You drag this icon out and drop it onto the blank canvas. This creates a soft link and wires the two views together. Now when you select a node in the tree, the note is displayed in the canvas.

This is the simplest case, but it pretty much encapsulates the whole concept. This concept of views is powerful because it is recursive. There would have to be an arbitrary limit on the recursiveness though, or things could get really ugly.

I absolutely DON'T think a SQL back end would be the way to go. I'd say a free-form database engine along the lines of AskSam is a better choice. Take a look at this page if you're unfamiliar with askSam. Especially the part under "Why People have chosen AskSam." Trying to map a beast like this to a rigid field/key/index structure is asking for heartache.

Sorry, I just love this thread

I just re-read the first message from superboyac.  After a lot of whinning about bad apps, and dreaming about good ones, it looks like we're heading off in the right direction.

I'd like to start laying out a database for use with MOANTS (Mother of all Note Taking Software -- I'm open to name suggestions).  I started looking for a nice normal database, like firebird, but Jimdoria mentioned using something like AskSam.

I'll start a new thread for MOANTS Database design and we can start discussions for Fields needed and engines.  I'll leave it to some nice interface-type folks to start on the application stuff.  There are probably two or three interfaces to start with, if you count a google desktop api.