[HN Gopher] Show HN: Note, my simple command-line note taking app
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       Show HN: Note, my simple command-line note taking app
        
       Author : BrandoElFollito
       Score  : 44 points
       Date   : 2021-02-22 18:19 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | tshtf wrote:
       | I've been using Joplin for note taking in the terminal:
       | https://joplinapp.org/terminal/. Joplin is great since it also
       | has mobile apps, and you can sync with multiple backends
       | (Dropbox, OneDrive, S3).
       | 
       | But it's anything but simple though, it brings along 579
       | dependencies.
        
       | dvt wrote:
       | Ah yes, here it is: the monthly HN note-taking app. I'm no
       | oracle, but here are some posts you will see in this thread:
       | 
       | - The people that swear by notepad/plaintext
       | 
       | - The people that swear by Markdown or some derivative
       | 
       | - The old curmudgeon that still uses pen and paper
       | 
       | - The one guy that uses Emacs (Org-mode) and he swears it's not
       | that hard "once you get used to it"
       | 
       | - "Here's how I take notes..." -- followed by some weird/cryptic
       | way of taking notes
       | 
       | - The inevitable meta post (hi mom!)
       | 
       | You guys must _really_ love taking notes.
        
       | hartator wrote:
       | It amazed me that after almost 3 decades we still don't have "the
       | way" to take notes on computer.
       | 
       | Evernote came close to it for me before they mess their UI.
       | Native Notes on iOS and on Mac is pretty straightforward but
       | misses search features and is.. ugly. Ending up with several .txt
       | files a little like OP organized in folders is also nice as it
       | should survived most of potential future changes in term of
       | everything and allows you to whichever editor but seems
       | inefficient.
        
         | vincentmarle wrote:
         | "The way" is of course Notational Velocity:
         | https://notational.net
        
           | AdamGibbins wrote:
           | That's been dead for years, replaced with
           | https://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/ which is replaced
           | with https://nvultra.com/
        
             | anaerobicover wrote:
             | Also worth checking out is The Archive. There are some
             | differences, but I've been very happy with it as a
             | successor. https://zettelkasten.de/the-archive/
        
         | rojobuffalo wrote:
         | i'm very fond of iOS/macOS Notes app. i use it heavily every
         | day. one breakthrough for me was to stop trying to organize. i
         | just write everything down in bulleted lists. and i create a
         | note for each day with the date at the top, ex. 2021-2-22,
         | which helps when scanning the list of notes. if i have
         | something coming up that i want to prepare for i just create
         | that note in advance, with the upcoming date at the top.
         | 
         | i find the search feature works well, except i have had an
         | occasion where it stopped looking further back in time for some
         | reason. that was actually pretty frustrating to discover.
         | 
         | why is it ugly? i think it looks good from the minimalist
         | perspective. the one thing that would make me happier is if i
         | could run it vim or have a subset of vim keybindings
        
         | powersnail wrote:
         | Note taking is a broad term for recording thoughts and
         | information; the requirement is difficult to define, and fairly
         | fluid.
         | 
         | We've had pens and paper since ancient times, and people are
         | still inventing new ways of organizing their notebooks.
         | 
         | I think "the way" might never come.
        
         | bobbylarrybobby wrote:
         | The issue is how you define what a note even is. Some people
         | say it's just plain text; some demand support for images; some
         | want to attach arbitrary files; some want rich text/markup, and
         | some demand markdown specifically while others don't care about
         | the underlying format; some want simple tables, while others
         | want full databases in their notes; some want to organize with
         | folder and tags, while some just want tags, while some just
         | want folders, while some want notes to live inside other notes.
         | 
         | With so many definitions of what a "note" is even supposed to
         | be, it's no surprise that we haven't settled on a single way to
         | create and edit them.
        
           | hartator wrote:
           | Totally true. I've ended up a mix between ReMarkable 2 e-ink
           | tablet for meetings notes, Apple Notes for things like
           | grocery lists, and regular folders on a cloud for long term
           | archiving and references.
        
         | ransom_rs wrote:
         | Granted, after centuries of written works, we still don't have
         | "the way" to take hand written notes. Everyones brain works
         | different, and people have total different ways to take notes.
         | 
         | I don't think this is 100% of the reason computers don't have a
         | universal note taking system, but it is definitely a part of
         | it.
        
       | BrandoElFollito wrote:
       | Hello HN!
       | 
       | After years of activity in the main threads I am jumping in with
       | an note taking application I wrote over the last few days.
       | 
       | Why another note taking application? Because the ones I tried are
       | really great but lack the simplicity I need. I finally decided to
       | write one to get rid of the zillions of paper scraps with cryptic
       | things like "7654" or "go to JK to get RF". What I needed:
       | 
       | - create a note directly from the command line: `<Win Key>note q
       | my first /oh a title/ note #france<Enter>`
       | 
       | - quickly edit a note via its serial number or title: `note e
       | todo`
       | 
       | - use my favourite editor which is much better than the one I
       | could write
       | 
       | - shorten my suffering when choosing a title for a one shot note
       | - just press enter and a readable date will be used
       | 
       | - tags!
       | 
       | - search, delete
       | 
       | I have many more ideas (they are in the README) and hope that
       | this 1.0 version will be useful to someone.
       | 
       | I would greatly appreciate any feedback - I am an amateur
       | developer so the code is far from nice but I tried to keep it
       | clean and with a minimal amount of excellent ideas that later
       | become hieroglyphic studies to understand what I meant then.
       | 
       | Thanks!
        
         | psalminen wrote:
         | Looks cool!
         | 
         | By the way, instead of alias, you can use setuptools to add it
         | to your PATH[0].
         | 
         | [0] https://python-packaging.readthedocs.io/en/latest/command-
         | li...
        
           | BrandoElFollito wrote:
           | Thanks! I am actually as we speak tryng to write an
           | Autohotkey script whcih would help to lanch it even faster.
           | As soon as I have it I will add it to the README
        
       | makeworld wrote:
       | Seems similar to nb.
       | 
       | https://github.com/xwmx/nb
        
         | BrandoElFollito wrote:
         | Thanks, it is a beautiful program. I will probably steal some
         | ideas :)
        
       | sidpatil wrote:
       | For a long time, my notetaking system consisted of a single alias
       | similar to the following:
       | 
       | jj=joe "~/journal/$(date --rfc-3339=seconds).txt"
       | 
       | It worked well.
        
       | notyourday wrote:
       | Here's mine. It uses an editor. Tags are done via :tag . Search
       | is supported using the same editor or grep. It automatically adds
       | a date. If I start typing on a command line then whatever I typed
       | becomes the starting line of a note. It is aliased to "notes".
       | #!/bin/bash            PAST_ALL_LINES="10000000" # skipping this
       | many lines puts us to the bottom of the file
       | EDITOR=/usr/bin/joe       LOGBOOK=~/.securedocs/notes.txt
       | if [[ ! -f ${LOGBOOK} ]]; then          echo "${LOGBOOK} is not
       | found. Check if it exists       first?"          exit 1       fi
       | if [[ ! -f ${EDITOR} ]]; then          echo "${EDITOR} is not
       | found. Install it first?"          exit 1       fi
       | STRING=''       if [[ ! -z "$@" ]]; then          STRING="$@ "
       | fi            echo -e -n
       | "\n`date`\n===============================\n\n$STRING"|${EDITOR}
       | +100000000 ${LOGBOOK}
        
       | crazypython wrote:
       | I'm interested in using org-journal, a minor mode for Emacs org-
       | mode, which supports collapsing. https://github.com/bastibe/org-
       | journal                   * Tuesday, 06/04/13         ** 10:28
       | Company meeting         Endless discussions about projects. Not
       | much progress              ** 11:33 Work on org-journal
       | For the longest time, I wanted to have a cool diary app on my
       | computer. However, I simply lacked the right tool for that job.
       | After         many hours of searching, I finally found
       | PersonalDiary on EmacsWiki.         PersonalDiary is a very
       | simple diary system based on the emacs         calendar. It works
       | pretty well, but I don't really like that it only         uses
       | unstructured text.
        
       | runjake wrote:
       | Along similar lines, nickjj also has a similar (but bash) notes
       | script at:
       | 
       | https://github.com/nickjj/notes
        
         | nickjj wrote:
         | Thanks for linking that.
         | 
         | Some noticeable differences between my script and theirs are:
         | 
         | 1. Mine is a zero dependency ~20 line bash script.
         | 
         | 2. Mine dates your files like YYYY-MM.txt for easy access later
         | on and then appends to the file for a specific month.
         | 
         | 3. Mine is designed to be used from the command line with the
         | least amount of effort possible while giving you the most
         | flexibility you can realistically ask for. Mine has no sub
         | commands. You can add 1 line notes by just typing `notes hey
         | this is my cool note` or run `notes` without arguments to open
         | this month's notes file in your $EDITOR. It also supports
         | taking input from stdin so you can save the output of programs
         | or your clipboard into your notes.
         | 
         | There's no built in things like searching because you can grep
         | your plain text notes at your leisure, and since the files are
         | dated that means you can go in there and delete your notes as
         | needed too. There's also no git integration built into the tool
         | because your notes directory is literally a directory of plain
         | text files. You can choose to `git init` a git repo in there if
         | you'd like. The note tool works the same with or without it
         | being a git repo.
         | 
         | This tool was created after ~20 years worth of plain text note
         | taking. There hasn't been a commit to the project in a year
         | because the script is basically done and works. I use it every
         | day. There's no need to add features into it like encryption or
         | backups because that can be handled elsewhere such as putting
         | the notes directory into Dropbox or having a backup script
         | reference that directory to backup (personally I rsync it with
         | a bunch of other directories to an external HD in a daily cron
         | job).
        
       | marcuskaz wrote:
       | It's a fun low risk space to try out a language. I just started
       | rewriting an old one I had now in Rust. Many similar ideas and
       | planned features, currently mine just accepts notes from command-
       | line, piped in, or uses the editor.
       | 
       | https://github.com/mkaz/zk
        
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       (page generated 2021-02-22 23:00 UTC)