Note taking has been a huge burden for me for many years. These days at work I use OneNote. But for my personal stuff I have tougher requirements.
Products come and go, and I want to keep my notes forever. Exporting into a convenient format is a must. I prefer something that works well offline. And if it's stored "in the cloud" I want it encrypted for everyone but me.
So these days I use text (markdown) files stored on my home NAS. They're organized into folders and I can "attach" any files by dropping them into the appropriate folder. I can access it when away from home over VPN. It's not the most convenient solution but it meets all of my requirements.
Well, some people would disagree.
I think markdown is good bc it has a very small footprint, and most of what you write is going to be natural language. Natural language has a lot of semantics and Unicode is going to stay around forever, meaning that is a secure way to store your text.
I'm with you, I moved to .markdown files and .taskpaper files a couple of years ago. They were in Dropbox, but now I keep them in a private Git repo. I get all of the niceties of version control while also being able to edit them on any device. Plus it's available offline.
My go to editor is Vim with the following plugins: vim-markdown, vim-pencil, Goyo, and taskpaper.vim. But, everything is in text, so I can use any editor.
For snippets and autoformatting of journal entry dates, I use text expansion through Espanso. Originally I relied on the editor, but then that limits what editors I can use.
I have a few aliases set up to launch Vim with particular files. I have a tips.markdown file that I use to store code snippets and other nuggets of help. The je alias automatically appened the next argument to the Journal file using the correct date format: je "This is a journal entry".
For tasks I usually use two files in .taskpaper format: daily.taskpaper and today.taskpaper. The daily.taskpaper file has repeatable tasks that occur every day. today.taskpaper is my main to do list. Other projects may have their own .taskpaper file, it depends on the project.
It's not for everyone, but it works well for me since I may be on my Windows desktop, my Mac laptop, a Chromebook, or even using my Atari 800.
Yeah, I don't know why it isn't being talked about more. It's pretty good, and getting better every day. The developer is pretty active on getting feedback too.
Markdown is the best solution for me too. I worked on Evernote for a long time but there's no syntax highlighting and it's not as straightforward as markdown. Markdown is fast and easy to write. I use mkdocs, git and netlify so I can access my notes from everywhere
Note taking has been a huge burden for me for many years. These days at work I use OneNote. But for my personal stuff I have tougher requirements.
Products come and go, and I want to keep my notes forever. Exporting into a convenient format is a must. I prefer something that works well offline. And if it's stored "in the cloud" I want it encrypted for everyone but me.
So these days I use text (markdown) files stored on my home NAS. They're organized into folders and I can "attach" any files by dropping them into the appropriate folder. I can access it when away from home over VPN. It's not the most convenient solution but it meets all of my requirements.
Markdown is a bad format for notetaking, because it doesn't have any concept of semantics or structure. It is a language purely for formatting.
Well, some people would disagree.
I think markdown is good bc it has a very small footprint, and most of what you write is going to be natural language. Natural language has a lot of semantics and Unicode is going to stay around forever, meaning that is a secure way to store your text.
I'm with you, I moved to .markdown files and .taskpaper files a couple of years ago. They were in Dropbox, but now I keep them in a private Git repo. I get all of the niceties of version control while also being able to edit them on any device. Plus it's available offline.
My go to editor is Vim with the following plugins: vim-markdown, vim-pencil, Goyo, and taskpaper.vim. But, everything is in text, so I can use any editor.
For snippets and autoformatting of journal entry dates, I use text expansion through Espanso. Originally I relied on the editor, but then that limits what editors I can use.
I have a few aliases set up to launch Vim with particular files. I have a tips.markdown file that I use to store code snippets and other nuggets of help. The
jealias automatically appened the next argument to the Journal file using the correct date format:je "This is a journal entry".For tasks I usually use two files in .taskpaper format: daily.taskpaper and today.taskpaper. The daily.taskpaper file has repeatable tasks that occur every day. today.taskpaper is my main to do list. Other projects may have their own .taskpaper file, it depends on the project.
It's not for everyone, but it works well for me since I may be on my Windows desktop, my Mac laptop, a Chromebook, or even using my Atari 800.
Espanso is really cool tool. Just seems not too many discussions on it
Yeah, I don't know why it isn't being talked about more. It's pretty good, and getting better every day. The developer is pretty active on getting feedback too.
I need to look it up ✍
Markdown is the best solution for me too. I worked on Evernote for a long time but there's no syntax highlighting and it's not as straightforward as markdown. Markdown is fast and easy to write. I use mkdocs, git and netlify so I can access my notes from everywhere
Do you use Port forwarding to access your VPN? Is it safe?
I run VPN software directly on my router, so no port forwarding is required. It's the safest thing available on a non-commercial home network. :)