[clue-tech] Note Software?

[Brian Gibson]

I just found this while searching: http://www.tiddlywiki.com/

It looks like it's a JavaScript-driven, single-page wiki.  It supports tags.  Since it's HTML it would be trivial to recover.  Speed is limited by your browser.   It's portable.  Easy to backup.  OS agnostic.  Supports links and media.  

I've never used it, but it looks very interesting.



----- Original Message ----
From: Jed S. Baer <cluemail at jbaer.cotse.net>
To: clue-tech at cluedenver.org
Sent: Tuesday, August 18, 2009 7:51:13 PM
Subject: [clue-tech] Note Software?

Hi Folks.

I've been looking around for some software to use to get various
fragments of info somewhat organized, and it seemed, at first blush, that
one of the various "notes" programs ought to do the trick. But I'm not
liking what I'm seeing after a bunch of searching.

I've looked at the websites for the well-known programs, such at Tomboy,
Gnotes, Kjots, Zim, Kbasket, and a few others. They all want to use some
sort of heierarchical organizing system. I don't care for that, because a
lot of things could easily go into multiple buckets / baskets / folders /
books / whatevers. Some of them, such as Xournal, have some limited
graphics capabilities -- sketching, or something. Don't need that
either, but it doesn't bother too much that it's there.

So here's my wishlist:

I'd rather be able to assign one or more tags to each "note", and then
have virtual folders based on tags. Even that wouldn't be necessary, as
long as it was easy to search by tag, and call up a list of all tags for
browsing.

Being able to link various notes together, preferably in a wiki-like
fashion, would be great.

Good handling of links to other content -- local files, URLs, etc. Maybe
ability to embed content, though I doubt I'd use that much, except for
small image files. I won't mind simply pasting in URLs and file paths.

Auto timestamp for creation date and last modified date for each note.
Even better, a history of modification dates. When I'm searching for
something, I might remember when I first noted it, or when I last changed
it. Or I might remember changing it 3 months ago, but not a trivial
change I did last week.

Easy editing: Either a wiki markup, or some WYSIWYG providing basic
functions. But not a replacement for a word processor. Wiki markup is
probably better, because ...

Storage in some format that's recoverable using other tools. Doesn't need
to be trivially recoverable, but not completely obscure.

Or: I haven't yet figured out what the tradeoff is (if there is one at
all) between fast access and recoverability. One idea I have is to simply
run MoinMoin, or Dokuwiki, or something. But I don't really want to have
to worry about database backup and recovery. Well, Doku appears to be a
flat-file wiki, but I haven't looked at its storage files -- could be
that'd be very easy to recover. I've lately been intrigued reading about
key/value pair datastores, which are known for fast access. I don't know
if that includes searching.

Really, what I'm looking for isn't so much a note-taking / organizing
program, as an information mapping tool. Certainly, I'd write notes to
myself, but I'd like to keep track of things that I currently have spread
among disparate methods. For example, in the case of books, I have 3
places where I have lists of books which have been recommended. What'd be
great would be to have a tag of "Books", with possible sub-tags of
"read", "unread", "owned", "borrowed", "to-buy", and "at library". I'd
also keep track of references and articles on English Enlightenment
philosophy. I have a large pile of docs on my HDs, quasi-arranged using
directory heierarchies, and that's proven to be impossible to keep track
of. (Of course, the process of entering info on all that stuff is
somewhat daunting as well.)

At this point, I'm not hopeful of finding some free software that'll do
what I want. But maybe someone knows of something I haven't been able to
find.

Failing that, I'm wondering how difficult it'd be to write something. My
programming chops are feeling pretty stale, and it'd be good exercise.

Later,
jed
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