[HN Gopher] Inkdrop: Organizing your Markdown notes made simple
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       Inkdrop: Organizing your Markdown notes made simple
        
       Author : memorable
       Score  : 59 points
       Date   : 2022-05-06 12:46 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.inkdrop.app)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.inkdrop.app)
        
       | snth wrote:
       | Jesus- a subscription fee for a Markdown editor?
        
         | iamcreasy wrote:
         | From the website:
         | 
         | Q: Why a subscription? A: Because lifetime pricing is not
         | sustainable. We know there are similar apps with lifetime
         | pricing out there, but it doesn't work for long-running
         | business. The sustainability is crucial especially for note-
         | taking apps because you will store a lot of notes in them day
         | by day.
         | 
         | Q: $5 per month is too expensive. A: It is for professional
         | use, not targeted to the mass of people. We believe it would
         | improve your productivity worth more than $5. This is the price
         | we would pay as a user.
         | 
         | Q: If lowered the pricing, you would get more customers. A: We
         | would like to provide good, quick and warm user support. If we
         | got a lot of users, we won't be able to support them all.
        
         | orasiscore wrote:
         | Hmmmm its something
        
         | FalconSensei wrote:
         | Cloud sync + 10gb storage space comes with a cost
        
           | lorenzfx wrote:
           | If you live in the Apple ecosystem you could use something
           | like FSNotes and icloud for 7$ for FSNotes plus 1$/month for
           | icloud.
        
           | spicybright wrote:
           | But it's certainly not $5/mo. Something in the ballpark of
           | $10/yr would be better.
           | 
           | I can buy a private VPS for $20/yr with 30gb of storage and
           | slap sync thing on it, and find an existing markdown editor
           | if I wanted.
           | 
           | That could easily pay for itself with 4 users. And that's
           | just scraping the bottom of the barrel of low cost servers.
           | 
           | Yes not everyone can set up a server, and yes this takes the
           | burden off spending time doing that. But your average
           | software engineer with some server knowledge could set this
           | up in a day.
           | 
           | The value proposition is just not there.
        
             | 20after4 wrote:
             | In a day? I'd think closer to an hour than a day to set up.
        
           | eternityforest wrote:
           | I like Obsidian+SyncThing
        
         | un3n wrote:
         | Yeah I'm with you. I just can't get over 5/mo for an editor &
         | 10gb of notes storage when I get 15g free through google.
        
           | tylersmith wrote:
           | Some people prefer to pay their services directly. I would
           | rather pay someone to host my notes, and to build/maintain
           | the infrastructure to host my notes, than hope Google keeps
           | finding it profitable to give me costless storage.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | thumbcore wrote:
       | Joke's on you, I use AsciiDoc
        
       | crooked-v wrote:
       | Yet another subscription-based editor app that... doesn't seem to
       | add anything significant compared to all the other subscription-
       | based editor apps.
       | 
       | And since it can't operate off the file system, you can't even
       | painlessly switch to the inevitable next subscription-based
       | editor app.
        
         | FinnKuhn wrote:
         | I would honestly just use something like notable and sync the
         | files over any cloud service.
         | 
         | notable: https://notable.app/
        
       | NocturnalKart wrote:
        
       | nathias wrote:
       | isn't the point of making your notes in markdown that you have it
       | in a simple file and use your file manager to manage notes ...
        
       | loloquwowndueo wrote:
       | Vimwiki is just the thing for markdown note taking for us command
       | line curmudgeons , and the resulting "wiki", just a collection of
       | interlinked markdown files, happens to be compatible with
       | Obsidian for those times I need a graph visualization.
        
         | lorenzfx wrote:
         | I'm also always coming back to vimwiki after trying something
         | else (mostly because I'm so used to (n)vim). I still want to
         | give zk [1] a try though (but it's also vim based).
         | 
         | The one killer feature for me would be a gui for neovim that
         | can display images. (Inserting images from the clipboard works
         | with clipboard-image.nvim.)
         | 
         | [1] https://github.com/mickael-menu/zk/
        
       | qwerty456127 wrote:
       | There already is quite a market of note taking and organizing
       | apps and Markdown editors. How is this one better than the rest
       | of them? I always am curious because none is actually perfect.
       | For any given app in this genre I can suggest dozens of
       | improvements. This means there always is a real chance another
       | one is going to be better.
        
       | QuikAccount wrote:
       | If I recall this is written by 1 guy in Japan. Tried it a while
       | back and it was very nice although I wouldn't subscribe at that
       | price I tried it at and would rather just buy Sublime. Seems it
       | went down from $10ish to $5 which is more reasonable. The dev
       | also maintains a blog that I find pretty neat
       | https://blog.inkdrop.app/
        
         | aldens wrote:
         | He also has a great youtube channel where he posts devlog type
         | stuff: https://www.youtube.com/c/devaslife
        
       | tranquilmind wrote:
        
       | bobuk wrote:
       | Inkdrop and Obsidian both have the same issue for me - electron.
       | I will not tire of recommending people FSnotes [1]. Native
       | (mac/ios only), opensource, one time payment (if you want it),
       | sync with iCloud, git and TextBundle support.
       | 
       | Not affiliated, just a big fan.
       | 
       | [1]: https://fsnot.es/
        
         | hokumguru wrote:
         | Isn't inkdrop React Native? The maker has a quite nice YouTube
         | channel where he writes RN and contributes regularly to RN open
         | source.
        
           | nguyenkien wrote:
           | Desktop app use electron.
        
         | themadturk wrote:
         | Though I usually feel the same, Obsidian is one of the lightest
         | and most responsive Electron apps I've ever used. (Not using it
         | anymore, because I didn't like on mobile.)
        
           | zmix wrote:
           | On mobile (Android) I use 'Markor' (it's on F-Droid), which
           | is a notetaking application for Markdown, that understands
           | folder hierarchies as notebooks and thus is compatible with
           | Obsidian on the desktop. I use Syncthing to sync.
        
           | lelandfe wrote:
           | It's still _very clear_ that it 's not a native Mac
           | application. All the classic Electron issues are present:
           | 
           | - Close the main window and try to figure out how to get it
           | to reopen. This is probably the reason Cmd-W doesn't actually
           | close the window (unlike every other app).
           | 
           | - macOS menubars are still just empty defaults. All
           | functionality is exposed in custom in-app menus, rendering it
           | all undiscoverable through the Cmd-? search.
           | 
           | - Wonky context menus that don't follow macOS standards. E.g.
           | right click on a note and type the first letter of the action
           | you want. Result: nothing.
           | 
           | - Weird, cross-platform verbiage litters the app. E.g. "open
           | in system explorer" instead of "open in Finder"; some hotkey
           | tooltips say "Ctrl/Cmd," while others use the Cmd symbol
           | "[?]"
           | 
           | - Horrendous focus styling and keyboard support - they've
           | cast out all the good native functionality here. Try Tab-bing
           | around the app and attempt to figure out what's focused. This
           | is so much worse than most Electron apps, as Chromium's a11y
           | is typically a big cachet.
           | 
           | Gosh, I could keep going. It's a terrific app, and this is
           | all fixable, but boy does Obsidian wear those Electron
           | origins on it's sleeves today.
        
         | sieabahlpark wrote:
         | Wow, a Mac and ios exclusive app that I can't use on my android
         | or Windows machine!
         | 
         | So incredibly useful to me since I don't own a Mac at all, nor
         | any iphone. Perhaps if you considered that people use other
         | operating systems you'd see why your solution is a nonstarter
         | and electron will continue to dominate the area?
        
           | npigrounet wrote:
        
       | lorenzfx wrote:
       | The space of markdown based note taking apps is getting more and
       | more crowded. I'm wondering how many more are sustainable,
       | especially as many free (and open source) ones are available.
       | 
       | Regarding Inkdrop: this page really doesn't tell me what's their
       | USP, why would I use this over something like Obsidian or Roam
       | (just to name some examples)?
        
       | taesu wrote:
       | I use github for this.
        
       | williamstein wrote:
       | There is a typo on the landing page. The screenshot on the right
       | says "two-clumn" instead of "two-column".
        
       | withinboredom wrote:
       | I absolutely love Inkdrop. Its pretty much my go-to drafting
       | editor. I like that it doesn't spellcheck or grammar check by
       | default -- perfect for drafts where you just need to get your
       | ideas down and before editing.
       | 
       | I used to use gists, but my browser wanted to spellcheck me all
       | the darn time. I just want to write with a bit of sensible
       | formatting, no distractions.
        
       | notum wrote:
       | As cool as this looks I can never see myself placing something as
       | important as my notes in a closed source app under a locked-in
       | vendor.
       | 
       | https://joplinapp.org/ does the trick for me, Synology NAS makes
       | sure notes are copied over to multiple devices at any given time.
        
         | rPlayer6554 wrote:
         | I love Joplin but the Android app really needs an update. It's
         | missing a lot of important features that are available on
         | desktop.
        
         | elondaits wrote:
         | What I don't feel comfortable with from generic file sync
         | solutions is the uncertain conflict resolution handling.
         | 
         | At least with Evernote (far from perfect) I get a dialog
         | informing me a conflict was found and it keeps both versions
         | allowing me to do a manual merge.
        
           | dexterdog wrote:
           | Synching does that and is open source. I use obsidian and
           | synching to keep everything synced from my laptop to my phone
           | and server.
        
             | spicybright wrote:
             | Can attest. Any conflict it can't resolve, it'll add the
             | other version it's comparing and append "(Conflict from
             | 5/7/20 1:00pm)" or something to it's name.
             | 
             | Not saying it's bullet proof, but I've never lost anything
             | before.
        
               | kqr wrote:
               | I was a very early adopter and there was a time when it
               | hit race conditions that somehow caused it to delete all
               | files in a shared directory.
               | 
               | ...that has not happened in the last few years, despite
               | my intensified usage.
        
           | christkv wrote:
           | It uses couch db with it's conflict resolution system. I
           | think you can even bring your own couch db instance
        
         | lelandfe wrote:
         | What risks do you see coming from using a closed source app for
         | your notes? Backups look pretty good, FWIW:
         | https://docs.inkdrop.app/manual/backing-up-your-data
        
       | Joe_Boogz wrote:
       | I have always been a fan of markdown editors. A few years back I
       | tried inkdrop and really enjoyed it. At the time it was a fair
       | bit more expensive. Seems the developer listened to feedback and
       | lowered the price. Kudos to them.
       | 
       | That being said, there are free alternatives like Obsidian that
       | are really great. Sync with your favorite cloud provider you are
       | already paying for. Sync with Git. Lots of plugins.
        
         | IceWreck wrote:
         | > open source alternatives like Obsidian
         | 
         | Obsidian is not open source. Its free for offline use, but
         | thats about it.
        
           | Joe_Boogz wrote:
           | Thank you for noting this. I edited my comment which was
           | originally meant to bring up that it's free rather than open
           | source.
        
           | jq-r wrote:
           | Also bloated in my experience, and has confusing navigation.
           | Using insider's version of Notable and quite enjoying it.
           | Wish it had a mobile version, but I guess you can't have
           | everything.
        
             | throwaway675309 wrote:
             | I actually find obsidian is one of the nicer electron-based
             | apps, up there with the likes of vs code.
             | 
             | Didn't find it bloated at all as it contains mostly
             | functionality directly related to notes. The ability to
             | support community driven JS plug-ins is just icing on the
             | cake and search is blazing fast. I've got 10,000 notes in
             | there and I can search through all of them using full and
             | partial text search in less than a second.
             | 
             | Fascinating how we had such a completely different user
             | experience.
        
             | phren0logy wrote:
             | Have you tried Logseq? Might be more your style, but could
             | also be too bloated.
        
               | jq-r wrote:
               | I might give it a go thanks.
               | 
               | I just love Notable due to it's simplicity and
               | performance. The UI looks just right, every note can have
               | it's own tab, there are no themes for now (apart from
               | light and dark one), but they are nice and contrasty, the
               | keyboard shortcuts are just right, the app is fast and
               | responsive. I don't need anything more. Fabio (the
               | author) knows whats he's doing and I like that he
               | respects his users. Obsidian is more like: lets throw
               | everything we can think of in, damned the performance,
               | UI, or usability. The only good thing I can say is that
               | I've managed to get both of them to play well together in
               | iCloud Drive (or any "cloud" drive would be fine). So on
               | my computers I use Notable, and on mobile devices I have
               | Obsidian to edit the same notes.
        
             | nvrspyx wrote:
             | I believe the developer of Notable is working on a mobile
             | version.
        
           | wodenokoto wrote:
           | Offline, non-commercial use. You cannot use Obsidian for work
           | related notes unless you pay
        
             | riidom wrote:
             | They seem to have changed that recently, though it's not
             | obvious from the pricing table. Under /eula it says:
             | 
             | "You need to pay for Obsidian if and only if you use it for
             | revenue-generating, work-related activities in a company
             | that has two or more people."
             | 
             | Not sure how to read that if you are, let's say, a
             | freelancer. My guess is you are a one-man "company" and the
             | other company is your customer?
        
           | TuringTest wrote:
           | For those who don't know it: you have logseq as a true open
           | source competitor of Obsidian.
           | 
           | Although it's not as much an _editor_ as an _outliner_ ;
           | notes are strongly hierarchical, and it's difficult to use
           | for writing plain markdown files. But that shouldn't be a
           | problem if your main need is note-taking.
        
       | emptyparadise wrote:
       | We're about to have another week of people posting note taking
       | apps. Always a fun exercise.
        
         | mikebos wrote:
         | Right let's not forget https://noteplan.co
        
         | themadturk wrote:
         | Notepad++, one long markdown file with dates as top-level
         | headings.
        
         | SilvanCodes wrote:
         | Let's add https://supernotes.app/ to the list right away. :p
        
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       (page generated 2022-05-07 23:02 UTC)