[HN Gopher] Tell HN: My new free note taking tool
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Tell HN: My new free note taking tool
So there are a lot of posts here about personal knowledge databases
& note taking apps ... and methodologies. I wanted a way to keep
track of info & just as importantly be able to easily see & edit
that data from anywhere. I wanted it to be robust, free, web-
based, able to host code examples as actual files (e.g. style.css
or script.js), and host images. Turns out this is all available
with Github & Gitlab. Step 1: Create a Private Repo Step 2: Hit
the . key or use the editor URL pattern:
https://github.dev/{{username}}/{{repo-name}} Step 3: Start using
... you can add sub-directories with Markdown for notes ... you can
add all the file types above. For Gitlab just click "Web IDE" from
your project's homepage. (I made this URL:
https://github.dev/{{username}}/{{repo-name}} my homepage, making
it super easy to access.) This is absolutely nothing new; but the
epiphany I had a week or so ago about using a repo in this way
seems to have really stuck (yes, a week is a short period of time
but often a note app or approach sticks for a day or 2 for me).
I'm really curious if others do something like this & what other
sorts of practices they might employ while doing this.
Author : ppetty
Score : 190 points
Date : 2022-07-19 15:28 UTC (7 hours ago)
| rschachte wrote:
| Nice tip, thanks!
| jszymborski wrote:
| I do this for a knowledge-base in our lab (especially for our
| server infrastructure). Only difference is that I just edit in
| VSCodium.
|
| It's pretty great, I can send a github URL to someone and if its
| a private repo, its both a "private"[0] and practical way to
| share information.
|
| I will say I do something similar on my personal KB at
| noteaureus.org except I also run it through Hugo. The GitHub
| method is a bit nicer for including collaborators that aren't
| familiar with Hugo, but I do like using Hugo over GitHub for two
| reasons:
|
| 1) You can tag posts
|
| 2) You aren't beholden to the whims of Microsoft (or anyone for
| that matter)
|
| The main drawback I can think of is that it's kinda baroque to
| make things password protected on Hugo in a meaningful way.
|
| [0] For certain definitions of private.
| Mylloon wrote:
| Personally, I use Obsidian.md [1] to take notes, especially
| because there is an extension for excalidraw [2] that I
| particularly like.
|
| To publish my notes, I use PineDocs [3] which generates a very
| nice website with the markdown files
|
| I synchronize the machine that hosts PineDocs with my note-taking
| machine using Syncthing [4]
|
| [1] https://obsidian.md/ [2] https://excalidraw.com/ [3]
| https://github.com/xy2z/PineDocs [4] https://syncthing.net/
| and0 wrote:
| I've been really enjoying Obsidian. I think of it as VSCode but
| for Markdown, with an extension marketplace more for notes than
| code.
|
| Turning markdown into an interactive kanban is especially
| powerful, and more extensions are being added all the time.
|
| I am going to check out Joplin soon, though. Obsidian could be
| a little friendlier and come with a couple more batteries for
| someone like me.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| https://dendron.so is an "Obsidian" as a VS Code extension.
| wenc wrote:
| For my knowledge base, I use VS Code with Markdown Memo,
| which supports back links and easy link creation. Free.
|
| Ultimately it's all just a bunch of Markdown files with
| mermaid diagrams and LaTeX equations. It's so simple.
| weberer wrote:
| I've switched from Obsidian to Joplin, which is a nicer looking
| FOSS alternative.
| capableweb wrote:
| Last time I checked, Joplin stores a bunch of metadata in
| databases and such, is that still true?
|
| I'm still using Obsidian after some years, mainly because
| it's just a directory of Markdown files (and some JSON
| configuration in the .obsidian directory), but also for the
| plugin ecosystem. Would it be hard to use terminal git to
| sync my Joplin database manually?
| moystard wrote:
| I am also very satisfied of Obsidian.
|
| Do you use excalidraw with a tablet or graphic tablet, or with
| your mouse? I have been exploring ways of taking manuscript
| notes.
| Mylloon wrote:
| With a mouse, I use it in class
| angryasian wrote:
| Here's another great template I've been utilizing
|
| https://github.com/Rainbell129/Obsidian-Homepage/releases
| JoshCole wrote:
| Seconding this; I switched to Obsidian from Notion and I've
| been liking it. I also use a plugin called Wielder for it that
| lets me write codeblocks in my notes and turns my note taking
| system into a literate programming environment. So I have for
| example a self-written plugin that applies transformations to
| existing pages to incorporate the sort of question templates
| suggested in books like How To Solve It or on websites like
| untools. I also have certain data structures built into the
| note environment - stuff like asynchronous task management.
| Since everything is markdown everything just defaults to
| working when these higher level tools aren't active because I'm
| in a no code environment.
|
| What I'm not so certain on is if this is _actually_ helping me
| think better enough to be worth the cost in time of getting
| fancy. This is an example of a blog post written basically by
| stringing together notes from walking a path through the graph
| of my notes:
|
| - https://joshuacol.es/2021/05/17/virtuous-cycles.html
|
| These are two I wrote before adopting the methodology which I
| feel a bit happier with because I feel like I learned more in
| the process of researching them and writing them:
|
| - https://joshuacol.es/2020/03/06/modeling-technical-
| income.ht...
|
| - https://joshuacol.es/2019/04/23/hypothesis.html
| diggan wrote:
| Off-topic maybe, but I'm the author of Obsidian Wielder
| (https://wielder.victor.earth), so it's great to hear that
| people in the wild are finding it useful! If you have any
| sort of feedback how it can help you more, please do let me
| know!
|
| I'm sure a lot of other Obsidian users here on HN would find
| Wielder useful as well, but the Show HN I made a while ago
| didn't get much traction
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31846474), maybe I'll
| retry once I've added some more features :)
| JoshCole wrote:
| Amazing work and thank you so much for making something so
| cool. With regard to feedback.
|
| - Some features I'm interested in are being able to install
| libraries or a recommended path for getting access to
| libraries via RPC to a less limited runtime. For example,
| lets say I want to use the hugginfaces API to do text
| extraction within my note. Clojure has some great tools for
| running arbitrary Python code from within it, but how can I
| leverage that code from within Weilder.
|
| - Is there planned support for importing from a namespace
| in another note? My current workflows are everything goes
| into one note and then I just hide the sections with the
| code so they don't distract but sometimes there are pages
| worth of code. I expect over time I'll find a lot of things
| that have common implementations.
| diggan wrote:
| > - Some features I'm interested in are being able to
| install libraries
|
| Might be tricky to achieve, as I don't think we can load
| arbitrary files at runtime in Obsidian. What could
| possibly work, is loading libraries via HTTP and evaluate
| them in Wielder after that, but would be tricky is my
| guess. Worth looking into to though.
|
| > or a recommended path for getting access to libraries
| via RPC to a less limited runtime. For example, lets say
| I want to use the hugginfaces API to do text extraction
| within my note. Clojure has some great tools for running
| arbitrary Python code from within it, but how can I
| leverage that code from within Weilder.
|
| If you can run a HTTP server locally (via Python's
| http.server for example), with the right headers set
| regarding CORS, you should be able to just use JavaScript
| `fetch` to GET/POST/PUT stuff to locally running servers.
| In Wielder, you'd do something like `(js/fetch
| "http://localhost:8080/read-data")` and use it just like
| you'd use any JavaScript Promise.
|
| > - Is there planned support for importing from a
| namespace in another note? My current workflows are
| everything goes into one note and then I just hide the
| sections with the code so they don't distract but
| sometimes there are pages worth of code. I expect over
| time I'll find a lot of things that have common
| implementations.
|
| Yeah, I'm currently thinking and playing around with how
| to achieve this, hopefully via supporting Clojure's `ns`
| declarations directly, so you can do `(ns my-
| vault.a-page)` in one document and then simply `(ns
| another (:require [my-vault.a-page :refer [a-func]]))` in
| another.
|
| For now (with a bit bad UI I'd admit), you can use the
| normal Obsidian including to reuse code from multiple
| pages, just uploaded an example here: https://wielder.vic
| tor.earth/Examples/Embed+code+from+other+...
|
| Not the best UX directly, and looks bad, so hopefully the
| whole `ns` endeavor will work out instead, but will take
| some time before I can implement that correctly.
|
| > Amazing work and thank you so much for making something
| so cool
|
| Thank you! And thanks a lot for the feedback, it's very
| helpful.
| lwerdna wrote:
| I'm interested in this bit:
|
| > ...lets me write codeblocks in my notes and turns my note
| taking system into a literate programming environment. So I
| have for example a self-written plugin that applies
| transformations to existing pages to incorporate the sort of
| question templates suggested in books like How To Solve It or
| on websites like untools.
|
| Do you have any posts or additional information on this in
| particular?
| JoshCole wrote:
| Depending on which particular subject you are interested
| in:
|
| - The plugin:
|
| https://wielder.victor.earth/Welcome shows the sort of
| things you can build with Wielder. The github repository
| for the library is here
| https://github.com/victorb/obsidian-wielder
|
| - How To Solve it
|
| The key ideas behind How To Solve It are that for a lot of
| our challenges there are strategies we can use to tackle
| them effectively. How To Solve It expounds on how to go
| about understanding a problem, understanding the connection
| of the data you have with what you don't know, how to make
| problems more tractable, carrying out a plan, and
| evaluating the results.
|
| - Untools
|
| A site dedicated to listing various strategies for
| thinking, communicating and prioritization; they sell
| templates similar in nature to what I'm building, but I
| depart sharply from them in my desired document
| representation choice for templates - Zettlekastian graph
| continuations for me versus linear documents for them.
|
| - My own tool
|
| This is currently private and not yet ready for public
| consumption. I have a whole lot of philosophical backing
| for what I'm trying to build but it is still very far from
| generating utility at the level I want it too. Later today
| I'll see about moving some private notes into a blog post
| going into more depth about what I'm building and why.
| UmYeahNo wrote:
| >To publish my notes, I use PineDocs [3] which generates a very
| nice website
|
| This is music to my ears(eyes?)! And, something I've been
| searching for my obsidian vault. I'm not a developer, could you
| expand just a bit about your PineDocs workflow for Obsidian?
| Especially: does it handle note-to-note links and
| transclusions?
| diggan wrote:
| If you want to publish a website directly from Obsidian +
| support the Obsidian developers monthly (), you can give
| Obsidian Publish (https://obsidian.md/publish) a try. I use
| it for my notes and as a demonstration website for one of my
| projects, works well enough for those use cases.
| UmYeahNo wrote:
| I can totally appreciate that. That pricing for Publish is
| way out of whack for my goals. My particular vault se case
| might only update once or twice a month (it's all already
| written), so nearly $200 a year for something so static
| just doesn't make sense.
| Mylloon wrote:
| I share a folder between my Obsidian vault and the folder
| PineDocs uses with Syncthing (because the machine that runs
| PineDocs is not my laptop), so as soon as I save my files the
| site is immediately updated, but PineDocs was not designed
| with Obsidian in mind, the links work but not the advanced
| features Obsidian offers.
|
| On the other hand, Perlite [1] is (I never really tested it
| but it looks cool) designed with Obsidian in mind so maybe it
| supports more features.
|
| [1] https://github.com/secure-77/Perlite
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Snap & Sketch is my core workflow (it's by far the fastest way
| to get information from meat space into notes), and the best
| app I've found so far to facilitate this is GoodNotes. It has
| three critical features:
|
| 1. Native snap & sketch support (no fussing with embedding
| every time you want to create/edit, which is all the time for
| me)
|
| 2. Stores notes as folders-of-PDF in dropbox, not proprietary
| format locked behind a subscription.
|
| 3. Fast OCR search (I'd happily swap this for good native text
| editing, but having some smooth search mechanism is very
| important and many graphical apps don't.)
|
| GoodNotes has plenty of weaknesses -- the drawing tools are
| primitive, the desktop text editing story is almost
| nonexistent, it's tied to the mac ecosystem -- so I have been
| delighted to see the explosion of good Markdown tooling which
| is strong in these other areas, and I have been hoping that one
| of them would be good enough at snap & sketch that I could
| jump. Obsidian.md+excalidraw comes dangerously close to
| challenging GoodNotes, but my brief trial on an iPad involved
| too much fussing around to make the snap & sketch workflow
| happen, so I don't think I'll jump quite yet.
|
| Just including my thoughts for anyone else out there
| approaching notes from the Snap & Sketch angle.
| cush wrote:
| What is Snap & Sketch? Google's turning up nothing
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Taking a picture and drawing on it. Yeah, I should have
| clarified that it wasn't a proper noun.
|
| https://www.dropbox.com/s/iuo9vjmb76d8kmx/8360%20Low%20Band
| ....
|
| Here's an example to illustrate the strengths and
| weaknesses. The biggest weakness is that it doesn't support
| prose very well, so it doesn't double as a blog post or as
| a full lab notebook that can communicate the story of what
| is happening to someone who doesn't already know. The
| strength is in the sheer amount of stuff I am able to
| document with extremely little effort: physical layouts,
| circuit structure, instrument setups, probe configurations,
| and results across a bunch of devices ranging from the
| 68000 era through x86 and ARM. Consider the number of
| diagrams I didn't have to make, the number of screenshots I
| didn't have to schlep, the number of measurements I didn't
| have to export, import, format, and describe. I just point
| my iPad, tap, and scribble.
|
| Making a proper lab notebook for this little repair
| exercise would have doubled the timeline. In academia, the
| need to communicate would have justified the time
| investment. For someone who just needed to generate a 2GHz
| pulse modulated clock and had a broken signal generator,
| quick & dirty won the day.
|
| Needless to say, I'd like to have the best of both worlds,
| but at the moment I regularly put up with the weaknesses of
| snap & sketch because its strengths are so important to me.
| [deleted]
| stakkur wrote:
| I basically do this with Dropbox, Emacs, and git, but just for
| shared 'personal' note taking/journaling amongst multiple
| devices.
| iKlsR wrote:
| See https://github.com/jbranchaud/til
|
| I think this guy pioneered it many moons ago, I've been doing
| something similar ever since I saw that.
|
| Previously...
|
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11068902
|
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22908044
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Can someone recommend a note taking app that will stay at the
| front of the screen. I sometimes record voiceovers in final cut,
| and want to read back my notes. I simultaneously want to have
| both final cut in full screen and the note app up front. Stupid
| thing goes into the background as soon as I click on final cut.
| Stickies do the same. I also want to be able to set the font size
| of my notes, and would prefer the app would just give me plain
| text and not try to format html when I copy something from the
| browser into it.
| mbgu wrote:
| emacs org mode
| disinterred wrote:
| 100%. Org-mode is markdown on steroids and already supports
| everything these markdown note-takers do plus more. The only
| reason people keep reinventing the wheel is because they don't
| want to use emacs.
| _ank_it wrote:
| with org-roam
| ews wrote:
| Just putting this here: I am using denote nowadays after org-
| roam and while it's not org-roam (I miss the dailies) it gets
| some stuff really right (tags, directories)
| yashasolutions wrote:
| this. I have used some many note taking app before emacs - from
| simplenotes, to joplin, and many other on Mac, Windows and
| linux, I cannot list them all, but since I have understood how
| to build a workflow around emacs, I have finally something I
| can stick to and which work.
|
| Having a tool that can adapt to an inevitably changing
| worklflow has been really a game changer for my capacity to
| take notes, log my days, and write in general.
| emerongi wrote:
| I've tried all kinds of things and even just a couple weeks ago
| tried out some other tools, but none of them beat simple text
| files. I push to Gitlab and I can view the notes on my phone.
| Editing is a bit of a pain, but since it's not often that I edit
| notes on the phone, I accept it.
|
| For me, managing tasks in text files is the hard part. Recently I
| added snippets to VSCode to easily tag my tasks and set due dates
| (the snippets just add searchable identifiers at the end of the
| line). Greping these identifiers is easy, however for due dates I
| will need a quick script to pick up all the tasks and order them.
| Shouldn't be too hard and can even be in a Gitlab CI pipeline to
| automatically re-order the list on every push.
|
| Re-reading my comment, it reminds me of the legendary "Dropbox is
| just FTP" comment :D.
| falcolas wrote:
| So, there's "todo.txt-cli"+ that can help manage todo files in
| a more task-orientated fashion, while still just using text
| files. As a bonus, it got something of a cult following a few
| years back, and there are apps for both mobile platforms which
| can interact with them too (even out of dropbox, iirc).
|
| + https://github.com/todotxt/todo.txt-cli
| dustinsterk wrote:
| Not the author, but I also use VSCode and installed "TodoMD"
| for my tasks. Highly recommend!
| https://github.com/usernamehw/vscode-todo-md
| autoexec wrote:
| > I've tried all kinds of things and even just a couple weeks
| ago tried out some other tools, but none of them beat simple
| text files.
|
| I've been exploring various alternatives recently, and what I
| really miss with simple text files are features like
| attachments and inline images. Even color adds a lot of
| utility. Right now I'm looking at Zim which is a wiki that
| stores content as text files but offers a bit more structure
| and functionality. It's not as full featured as I'd like in the
| fonts/colors department, but it checks a lot of boxes
| (including having todo lists and actual check boxes).
| Spellcheck is another problem since it doesn't include one
| natively and the plug-in a huge pain to install and get
| working.
| enviclash wrote:
| Today I had a demo of zenkit hypernotes, it is kind of
| intelligence-driven, but the usefulness of some features
| (blocks?) seem unclear to me
| cybg wrote:
| I use GitJournal app. And Obsidian for PC.
| tdub311 wrote:
| Any reason you prefer GitJournal to the Obsidian app?
| staindk wrote:
| None of my note taking is amazing but I'm quite happy with the
| state of it.
|
| Most of my personal notes end up in Google Keep as that has a
| bunch of nifty sharing/reminder/etc. features built in.
|
| At work I take all my notes in a "diary.md" markdown file in a
| pinned VSCode tab. I started taking bullet-pointed daily notes to
| help remind myself about what happened the previous day to make
| standup meetings easier... it has helped tremendously past that
| too though, as I now habitually take notes for meetings and other
| goings-on as well.
|
| To start, the basic process was:
|
| 1. Set up a diary.md file in its own folder, open it in my main
| VSCode window, and pin the tab
|
| 2. Set up a VSCode Markdown snippet for "td" (for 'today') ->
| generates requisite headings, with the current day's date and the
| first bullet point for note-taking
|
| 3. Set up personal private git repository in the diary folder so
| that my notes don't die if my laptop does
|
| 4. Set up bash alias "gpn" (for 'git push notes') -> auto commit
| my notes with some "automated macro commit" message and push to
| remote
|
| 5. Each year I start fresh and rename the old diary.md file by
| adding the year number to it and filing it away in the
| repo/archive folder.
|
| If I'm working on a bigger project I'll set up a separate
| Markdown file in the same repo and make project-specific notes in
| there, while keeping the standup bullet points in diary.md -
| otherwise for message drafts or more general meetings notes I
| just add them under subheadings inside the day's "diary entry".
| Keyframe wrote:
| Google Keep is a treasure. I sincerely hope Google doesn't kill
| that one too!
| marzell wrote:
| What does Step 3 mean here? What is meant by "..."? Are you
| talking about the Explorer menu in Github? Or the dotfile package
| manager (ellipsis)?
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| Your implementation/idea looks interesting, but I am looking in
| different direction. I do _not_ want web based. I am often in
| areas where I do not have network access. I do not want to deal
| with security breaches, vulnerabilities, down times.
|
| I do _not_ want to type things. I am looking for a tool that will
| take _voice recording_ and convert it to text on my desktops and
| and most importantly my (Android) mobile devices.
|
| I have been using text files in markdown and raw text before
| that, for decades. They are searchable, quick and accessible
| across multiple platforms.
|
| Yet, I still use my dictaphone[0]. It requires pressing a single
| button, it records my voice, time stamps it, and files it.
|
| I am looking for a solution where the app behaves as a
| dictaphone, _and_ voice-to-text is performed, _and_ the files are
| local if I want them to be.
|
| Make something like that and I am willing to drop coins.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictation_machine
| ge96 wrote:
| Dragon speech? Has integrations like Evernote. I know that's
| online but they have apps too.
| hobbitperusal wrote:
| I discovered this one not long ago, and I think it would tick
| most of the boxes for your use case: https://a9.io/voiceliner/.
| artificial wrote:
| Also recommend voiceliner!
| whoibrar wrote:
| I can think of two things on top of my mind.
|
| 1. otter.ai : Dedicated transcribing app, does a great job
| atleast for English. You can also export the text. Only caveat
| is free option might be limiting for extensive use.
|
| 2. Google Voice Input: I know, very obvious but given the
| amount data they have access to, it's no surprise it has
| probably better than even paid alternatives. You can simply use
| Google keyboard and hit mic and it will start typing out almost
| instantly.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| I've been planning to build this for mac/ios/ipad and have
| researched/used the foundations - let me know if I can reach
| out if you are interested in testing or giving feedback,
| unfortunately Android isn't a priority as I'm solo indie and
| favor native
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| Thank you for the offer. I do not belong to the Church of the
| Fruit ;) so I cannot provide help with testing. When you have
| something for the Beevil Junta, let me know.
|
| ( _I am allowed, this is dad jokes week._ )
| k6hkUZtLUM wrote:
| Do you think this could be useful in a classroom environment?
| Maybe shared notes for students and/or groups?
|
| My personal workflow is Plain Text files (often markdown) in a
| Notes folder on Dropbox. nvAlt on my main machine to quickly
| search, edit, and create notes. A shortcut in terminal that cd's
| me into the directory, rg for cli search, and Editorial for
| mobile access. I have thousands of notes and have only had a few
| sync issues over the years.
| tsaifu wrote:
| Yeah, web IDEs have made life a lot easier but I don't think the
| experience works well for a minimal note taking flow. one of the
| most important things for me when it comes to a note-taking app
| is to be able to write free form and without the need for too
| much process - obviously this is not quite possible in markdown
| or really most digital formats, but also just the fact that I
| know git is backing my notes store creates a maintenance burden
| in my mind that I'm not sure I care for. I used to use jupyter
| notebooks way back when which felt more flexible but even that
| began to feel too heavy a process.
|
| Do you use git at all in terms of committing notes and looking
| through history, or are you only ever adding on top and treating
| a commit like a save in a notepad app? This is a bit peripheral
| but I've been considering investing in a remarkable tablet, but
| using it obviously requires me to carry an additional physical
| device around.
| ppetty wrote:
| So for both use cases (Gitlab & Github) their web IDEs are
| leveraging Git (from the web GUI). So the cool aspect of all of
| this is that I could clone the repo locally and maybe even re-
| purpose for a Hugo site. But the core benefit of version
| control is there.
| tsaifu wrote:
| Oh yeah, I know. Let me rephrase - do you actually leverage
| the functionality that git (through Github/Gitlab) provides
| you in your note-taking? Do you go back in the history to see
| what you committed - do you bisect or look at meta, or commit
| in atomic ways so that things are more "organized" from a
| timeline perspective?
| jarenmf wrote:
| I use vimwiki this way. I changed the landing page name to
| `README.md` and used markdown files so I can always see it
| rendered beautifully on Github. I have another vim extension that
| automatically commits and pushes the changes.
| jmconfuzeus wrote:
| I've been using Joplin lately. Syncing is done via Syncthing.
|
| I like it for the markdown and encryption. Also free.
| dnsmichi wrote:
| GitLab team member here, thanks for sharing!
|
| I'm using the Web IDE to take notes in most of my projects, work
| and personal, and publish the notes with MkDocs and GitLab Pages
| to a searchable frontend/domain when needed. Editing also happens
| in Gitpod with live preview in the browser.
|
| You can find all resources for o11y.love [0] and opsindev.news
| [1] in the GitLab projects, including .gitpod.yml configuration,
| mkdocs.yml setup, .gitlab-ci.yml deployments.
|
| I have been writing lots of documentation in my past OSS
| projects, so I am used to Markdown as markup language, taking
| notes very fast. Learning Markdown requires some practice, and
| can be helped within Gitpod and the VS Code extensions, if the
| default preview is not sufficient. [2] [3] You can also sync the
| notes repository offline into VS Code as desktop IDE for example.
|
| Using Obsidian.md to take notes and publish with GitLab pages [4]
| looks promising too; I have not tried it yet.
|
| [0]
| https://gitlab.com/everyonecancontribute/observability/o11y....
|
| [1] https://gitlab.com/dnsmichi/opsindev.news
|
| [2] https://www.gitpod.io/docs/ides-and-editors/vscode-
| extension...
|
| [3] https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/languages/markdown
|
| [4] https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2022/03/15/publishing-
| obsidian...
| zerop wrote:
| Wanted to explore your site: https://opsindev.news/, but it's
| giving SSL error to me.
| PcChip wrote:
| could it be your local environment blocking the .news TLD,
| and giving you a redirect?
|
| (for example, Cisco Umbrella (formerly OpenDNS Umbrella))
| dnsmichi wrote:
| Thanks for flagging. opsindev.news is hosted on GitLab Pages
| using Let's Encrypt. Maybe the TLS ciphers or versions do not
| match. Which error message do you see, browser/OS and
| location may help (if you want to share)
|
| If the MkDocs website does not work, suggest the following
| workarounds: Newsletter issues in [0] as markdown files,
| example [1] or the newsletter archive on Buttondown [2].
|
| I'm using Buttondown to send the newsletter, MkDocs serves as
| web-searchable archive. Kudos to Michael Hausenblas here for
| the idea, he publishes the o11y.news newsletter.
|
| [0] https://gitlab.com/dnsmichi/opsindev.news/-/tree/main/doc
| s/a...
|
| [1] https://gitlab.com/dnsmichi/opsindev.news/-/blob/main/doc
| s/a...
|
| [2] https://buttondown.email/opsindev.news/
| dangus wrote:
| Yes...it's a git repository with VSCode attached, which you can
| do locally as well.
|
| Arguably, this is better with a local copy of VSCode rather than
| the web editor, which is missing features in comparison. As a
| bonus you can choose any git provider you'd like.
| sodimel wrote:
| Nice!
|
| We tried using the Wiki of a gitlab project in my company to
| gather some knowledge in a single place, but it was too "hard" to
| go to a page and edit it. So we moved the content in the repo.
| Again, we had to search if our content was already written or
| not, and we were spending time trying to find files and words
| instead of writing shorts texts.
|
| So we moved our content on the gitlab issues of the repo.
|
| Issues have the same markdown support, we can use ctrl+v to
| insert screenshots, we can add tags to the issues, we can assign
| people to relevant issues, we can comment with new things to
| do/add, and we can use the search bar to find relevant content.
| All our "knowledge doc" is stored insides the issues of an empty
| project named "doc".
|
| We were just thinking about something to replace an older system
| not used anymore, and since it's been 2 years I think I can say
| that issues really work well for us (small team, 6 devs, some of
| us write more issues than others).
|
| For personal notes I did what every dev do when they think about
| a problem ("Why not make my ideal tool myself?"), and I created
| n.py, a very small Python program that's used to take incremental
| notes using any program (I used sublime text, nano and now I'm
| learning vim through it), search in the notes content and display
| them (repo here: https://git.bitmycode.com/sodimel/n).
| dnsmichi wrote:
| GitLab team member here, thanks for sharing your experience!
|
| The UX with editing the wiki, using WYSIWYG content editor [0]
| has been improved in recent releases. [1] I peeked into 15.2
| (self-managed release coming on Friday, July 22) which brings
| rendering Mermaid, PlantUML, Kroki diagrams previews. [2]
|
| Maybe the wiki can be worth to revisit in the future, there are
| more features underway, suggest diving into this epic [3]
|
| > Issues have the same markdown support, we can use ctrl+v to
| insert screenshots, we can add tags to the issues, we can
| assign people to relevant issues, we can comment with new
| things to do/add, and we can use the search bar to find
| relevant content. All our "knowledge doc" is stored insides the
| issues of an empty project named "doc".
|
| Great to see that you have found a workflow, and use issues to
| keep things documented and organized. Maybe a suggestion for
| creating an entry point into the dcc project: Use GitLab CI/CD
| to read the issues from the REST API, group by label, and
| render a Markdown README.md file which gets pushed to the
| repository automatically. That way the "index" is generated and
| provides greater visibility into the documentation issues.
|
| I like API challenges, so I've hacked [4] a small script [5]
| using python-gitlab to better illustrate what I mean :-) Uses
| issues [6] with labels to generate an index.md [7] (can also be
| README.md for example).
|
| Feel free to repurpose for your own needs, if that helps. The
| missing step is to automate it using GitLab CI/CD Schedules,
| but that's documented.
|
| [0] https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/wiki/#content-
| editor
|
| [1]
| https://about.gitlab.com/releases/2022/05/22/gitlab-15-0-rel...
|
| [2] https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/merge_requests/86701
|
| [3] https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/5401
|
| [4] https://gitlab.com/dnsmichi/api-
| playground/-/merge_requests/...
|
| [5] https://gitlab.com/dnsmichi/api-
| playground/-/tree/main/pytho...
|
| [6] https://gitlab.com/dnsmichi/api-playground/-/issues
|
| [7] https://gitlab.com/dnsmichi/api-
| playground/-/blob/main/index...
| whoibrar wrote:
| Everytime I see someone from a company actually caring to
| help out users even befor asking brings little joy :)
| somenewaccount1 wrote:
| Lol. So adorable. Private repos weren't always free.
|
| And make sure you don't accidentally ever make it private, you
| would be surprised what credentials you might have accidentally
| put in it's got history.
|
| And then you have log in to a second github account if your
| company forces github tied to a company email.
|
| No such thing as a free lunch.
| higgins wrote:
| Yes!
|
| I keep a daily log tracked in git. All of it public although some
| information is encrypted with my privatization tool
| (https://github.com/higgins/privatize).
|
| The log itself is a simple org file but I parse and render it in
| html here so that I can share important event dates (eg: my
| wedding) with my family and friends.
|
| Here is what I did yesterday:
| https://encapsulate.me/log.html?date=07-18-2022
|
| Here is my wedding date:
| https://encapsulate.me/log.html?date=03-04-2022
| jjkmk wrote:
| Great tip, this works better than onenote.
| eterevsky wrote:
| One downside to a Git repo is that it doesn't have an easy-to-use
| mobile app like Google Keep or Apple Notes.
| jaimehrubiks wrote:
| THIS.
|
| To me the the most important thing about note taking is
| clicking a button and immediately being able to write
| something, either pc or phone. I use google keep because it's
| the most straight forward way for me and it is synced. I would
| love a replacement (because it's so limited, and don't like the
| desktop client...), but it needs to be as convenient.
| ppetty wrote:
| Totally agree, and to date my workaround is that my default
| view for the repo is the initial README.md in edit mode ... I
| drop stuff that's top of mind or urgent and then afterwards
| (or later) move to a different file if needed.
| mikehotel wrote:
| Working Copy works as a mobile app interface to a git repo,
| including edits to files in Markdown (for some approximation of
| easy-to-use). Pushing changes to remotes does require purchase.
| Daegalus wrote:
| have you tried GitJournal? it works great for me, handles most
| note taking styles
| gofreddygo wrote:
| This is my comfort zone:
|
| Todo = plain text.
| sublime/keep/applenotes/pen+paper/whiteboard/
|
| Work notes = outlook drafts.
|
| Personal notes = google docs.
|
| Some plain text conventions I use. [ ] a todo
| [x] done task. I delete it after couple weeks. [ ]
| another task __some extra notes. Anything with double
| underscores means WIP. I just search for it and continue from
| there
| dangoor wrote:
| This is one of the big reasons to use Obsidian (or similar).
| You still get markdown files on disk, and you can even still
| put it in a git repo if you really want. But you also get
| decent desktop/mobile apps with higher-level organization tools
| on top.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Absolutely yes. Obsidian is might as well have been called
| "MarkdownOS" it's so powerful, flexible, extensible, etc.
| Amazing plugins like dataview and Excalidraw, and a world-
| class editing experience (hotkey-togglable WYSIWYG mode)
| etc... it's become the heart and hub of my system and I
| recommend it without reservation.
| throwaway_9120 wrote:
| Notion has replaced all my note taking apps, bookmarking apps,
| idea dump apps etc
|
| A single source of truth for me.
| arawde wrote:
| I've become more and more fond of Notion over the last few
| months. The composition of "blocks" is very nice, and even
| things like how indentation is done makes a huge difference in
| taking notes. I can manage meal planning, grocery lists, todos,
| essay drafts, and software projects all in one tool.
|
| It's also very easy to interlink things and make notes as
| verbose or minimal as you like from page to page. I can define
| an item in my weekly todos but then link to a project page
| that's part of a kanban board that has more context. Overall
| the UX just feels really elegant compared to everything else
| I've tried to use.
| recroad wrote:
| I have tried so many of these and ended up landing on the free
| version of Notion. I like the multi-device support and the nested
| content idea.
|
| The desktop app is stable and the web one is performant as well.
| voydik wrote:
| I, too, have been digging Obsidian
| vorticalbox wrote:
| Recently I've been using joplin [0] has mobile and desktop apps
| and uses a number of cloud storage to sync.
|
| [0] https://joplinapp.org/
| qvrjuec wrote:
| I tried wholeheartedly to migrate to using Joplin from apple
| notes so I could use a native client on more platforms than my
| phone + laptop, but it was frustrating in so many ways. S3
| storage syncing frequently broke on the iOS app, simple auto-
| formatting insidiously defied my expectations, and it was very
| difficult to keep things organized without very explicitly
| labeling my notes (which I don't have to do with Apple notes,
| as you can see a preview of the text contained inside of the
| note). I'd love to revisit joplin in a few years when I have
| more time to tinker or contribute to the project, though.
| NabiDev wrote:
| Syncing in joplin is a pain. It brokes everytime.
| vorticalbox wrote:
| I've not encountered this at all so far, syncing between my
| Linux desktop, android via Dropbox as always worked.
| zcmack wrote:
| yeah syncing works fine so long as you rely on ... some
| other thing that actually works :D
| raybb wrote:
| Which GitHub alternatives have something similar to GitHub pages?
| jszymborski wrote:
| There are some hints as to how to do this with Gitea in this
| issue[0].
|
| Unfortunately, it doesn't seem very easy to do w/o running a CI
| task or something like that.
|
| [0] https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/issues/302
| zufallsheld wrote:
| Gitlab has Pages:
| https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/pages/
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(page generated 2022-07-19 23:01 UTC)