[HN Gopher] Lowercase - A simple way to take and share notes
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Lowercase - A simple way to take and share notes
Author : siegers
Score : 139 points
Date : 2024-05-03 14:39 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.lowercase.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.lowercase.app)
| mattstrayer wrote:
| co-founder here: feel free to ask any questions!
| voidUpdate wrote:
| What are the advantages of this over, say, Obsidian?
| mattstrayer wrote:
| Lowercase really shines when you want to take notes free-form
| and then be able to share those notes out into the world. You
| can easily make a note public & even cooler than that you can
| turn a lowercase note into a presentation with just a few
| clicks.
|
| Here's an old example I pulled up -> https://www.lowercase.ap
| p/@matt/p/1f6c83d5-2869-4024-a687-fc...
|
| In my editor I was able to just group parts of my note into
| logical slide sections and then publish.
|
| Edit: you can move through the slide show with your left and
| right arrows.
| yellow_postit wrote:
| Can I export or host the data myself?
|
| For work sensitive notes I can't/won't use an untrusted sync
| mechanism.
| mattstrayer wrote:
| Totally a fair use-case and request!
|
| Right now we don't have support for a local storage mechanism
| or self-hosting. We are extremely keen on privacy and are
| very open to working towards either of those two options.
| detritus wrote:
| Yeah, I couldn't imagine hosting my Most Important Notes on a
| freebie service whose provenance I don't entirely know.
|
| Notes are self host for me.
| Hendrikto wrote:
| Who is the target audience?
| siegers wrote:
| Folks with technical experience but not necessarily web devs.
| When you want more out of Google Docs, Notes, etc. but don't
| want to invest the time in building it yourself. Or, that's
| not your skillset.
|
| - Syntax highlighting - "one off" Public pages - Slide
| presentations - embedding task lists with dates
|
| Also, was a pandemic project...so ppl were just using tech
| and sharing in different ways than they had been.
| msravi wrote:
| Two questions:
|
| 1. Doesn't seem like there's support for latex-style math? (Or,
| at least couldn't find it in the documentation and putting an
| equation between $$ doesn't seem to work). Is this planned?
|
| 2. Is there a way to export your notes?
| siegers wrote:
| other co-founder here:
|
| 1. Currently there isn't support, but not opposed if there is
| a need. 2. Also, there isn't a way to export (or self host)
| as of now.
|
| Just some background - We originally built this out as a
| standalone desktop app (~4 years ago) and then re-worked it
| for the web around the same time. We were planning to
| eventually rewrite the desktop app for just that reason - to
| have the offline syncing and cleaner export UX.
| aae42 wrote:
| whenever i see a free to use cloud service like this i think
| either 1:
|
| - they won't be able to afford to run it much longer and it'll
| shut down with apologies about being a hobby project that got
| out of hand
|
| or
|
| - they start charging more for it than i'd like to spend once i
| become reliant on it
|
| don't see any links to any source code... so doesn't seem to be
| something i can host myself... i typically try to avoid
| investing in services that i don't have some kind of guarantee
| with either way (that i'm paying to keep it running, or that i
| can fork it or host it myself when the hobbyist gets bored)
|
| why should i invest the time in using your product?
| rsiqueira wrote:
| REQUEST: Please add an option for a monospace/code font. I see
| that <pre><code>...</code></pre> works very well (good
| monospace block style), but I have to inspect and edit the
| source.
|
| With this, we could be able to use it for code!
|
| THANKS!
| calyhre wrote:
| Nice product! I might have missed mentions of it, but is it real-
| time editing? Does it supports multi users?
|
| A warning that might spoil a bit your adventure on the long run:
| Your published pages will be exploited somehow. SEO backlink
| abuse, phishing, etc. Offering free public hosting is what people
| with ill intent are looking for, and you can be sure that at some
| point they'll look at your solution
| mattstrayer wrote:
| Thank you!
|
| It is real-time editing! We leverage web-sockets to sync across
| multiple logged-in sessions. But as of today it does not
| support multiple users collaborating on the same document.
| siegers wrote:
| (co-founder here)
|
| Thank you! It is realtime across devices/instances for the
| active user. Currently it doesn't support collaborative editing
| _but_ it 's always been on the back of our minds if there is
| enough interest. Aside from just doc syncing for multi-users,
| we'd need to make some changes in the doc
| structure/presentation to provide a clean UX around that
| (without making the UI to complex). That said, it's not off of
| the table :)
|
| re: public pages. Thank you and definitely top of mind for us
| to monitor.
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| Amazing work! Thank you for sharing here.
|
| A while ago, I made something exactly like this called writedown:
| https://writedown.app
|
| It is a free and open source, simple and easy to use Notion
| alternative.
|
| I had to leave it midway (it's ready to use and stable though)
| because my other projects needed attention but I'll get back to
| it someday :)
| siegers wrote:
| Thank you! And cool app too! We had a similar experience in
| that we built the majority of this ~4 years ago. And it's been
| stable since.
| lovegrenoble wrote:
| Sooo expensive, thank you sooo much!
| Linell wrote:
| This comment is a little confusing unless you click through --
| the pricing page says that it's free to use with no strings
| attached.
|
| https://www.lowercase.app/pricing/
| fori1to10 wrote:
| Why would I use this, instead of Obsidian (say)?
| balder1991 wrote:
| For once, Obsidian publish is quite expensive.
| diegof79 wrote:
| Obsidian publishing costs USD 8 per month. A Starbucks latte
| in SF costs USD 5.88.
|
| I don't use Obsidian Publish, and I don't need it. I use the
| Obsidian app for free, and I don't need the Sync feature as
| it works fine with iCloud.
|
| If at some point I need the publish feature, I consider the
| price that is less than two lattes per month a good deal
| given the zero cost of the app that I used for a long time.
| karmajunkie wrote:
| that's certainly a valid reasoning. someone else may well
| have an equally valid reason for choosing a different path.
| input_sh wrote:
| It isn't your only option:
|
| https://github.com/oleeskild/obsidian-digital-garden
|
| https://github.com/jackyzha0/quartz
|
| https://github.com/jonstodle/obsius-obsidian-plugin
|
| https://github.com/yoursamlan/pubsidian
|
| https://github.com/ppeetteerrs/obsidian-zola
| FalconSensei wrote:
| Obsidian Sync costs money to sync your files between devices.
| Obsidian Publish also costs money on top of that to publish
| your notes.
| perplexa wrote:
| Obsidian has a community plugin called "Remotely Save" that
| lets you sync your vault via Webdav, S3 (compatible),
| Dropbox, or OneDrive. It works on all my devices and
| synchronises my data just fine. You could also use something
| like Syncthing or any other third party solution that syncs
| your Yaml directories.
| kepano wrote:
| Obsidian runs on local Markdown files so there are many free
| options you can use for syncing and publishing notes.
| teamspirit wrote:
| I've been using icloud to store my vault and have found it to
| be great to sync with laptop, phone, and tablet (obviously
| they're Apple devices as iCloud isn't supported on anything
| else).
|
| It's been really solid. When I used an android phone I had a
| lot more difficulty. While syncthing is reliable on android
| and macbook, iphone and ipad don't work nearly as well.
| adfm wrote:
| There's iCloud for Windows. https://support.apple.com/en-
| us/103232
| siegers wrote:
| co-founder here: Just a little context on the "why" from the site
| -
|
| > We created lowercase as a side project to make it easier for
| folks to quickly share content without the pressure of having the
| perfect blog post. Sometimes you just want to share thoughts
| without worrying about styling and hosting. Ideas aren't always
| structured. And sometimes simple and easy is what you need.
|
| > A note-taking app that is simple, fun to use, snappy, and easy
| on the eyes. There is no one perfect note-taking tool. Everyone
| has their preferences. But we feel that we've landed on something
| nice.
|
| > We built lowercase in our spare time as a passion project. No
| funding.
|
| > We decided from the very beginning that we'd never collect or
| share any user data. We don't even use website analytics. The
| intent of lowercase is to stay lean and serve a purpose - make it
| easier to share thoughts in sometimes ever-evolving documents.
| bjourne wrote:
| > We decided from the very beginning that we'd never collect or
| share any user data.
|
| Then why not use OAuth?
| siegers wrote:
| Wasn't necessary since we weren't intending to share
| information with another service and felt that the 3rd party
| requirement could be limiting.
| johnnyfived wrote:
| This answer doesn't make sense to me. If anything oauth far
| better proves you won't be sharing information with other
| services (you're not collecting logins and accounts). It's
| more limiting to ask users to sign up to the app.
| siegers wrote:
| Meaning that we'd be limiting users that don't use the
| provider(s) that we'd support. At that time, we felt that
| username/password was the lowest friction at the time.
| We're happy to re-eval if needed though!
| beretguy wrote:
| Please leave username-password authentication. I never
| use oauth and absolutely hate it.
| nunodonato wrote:
| exactly, I also hate websites that rely on oauth alone.
| bjourne wrote:
| Then use both regular sign-up and OAuth? People that just
| want to try the service don't have patience for email
| verification.
| tbeseda wrote:
| FYI, I can't delete my account:
|
| Request URL: https://www.lowercase.app/api/accounts/tbeseda/
|
| Request Method: DELETE
|
| Status Code: 404 Not Found
| siegers wrote:
| (co-founder) Sry about that - if you want to email
| lowercasehq@gmail.com I can remove and confirm for you.
| tbeseda wrote:
| Not a huge deal! I just wanted to let you know the API is
| broken/missing. I'm pretty settled on my note-taking set up
| for now, so I didn't plan to keep the account.
| iseeyouseewesee wrote:
| some feedback:
|
| as a first time visitor, the pricing page is really confusing. if
| its free why is there a stripe faq immediately below? i am still
| confused whether this product is free or paid without signing up.
| the pricing page requires some rework imo
| the_svd_doctor wrote:
| https://www.lowercase.app/pricing/ looks pretty clear to me.
| You can optionally subscribe to support the project, but
| otherwise it's free.
| willio58 wrote:
| I think having pricing linked like that is an immediate turn-
| off to potential users. Personally the second I see a pricing
| link in a nav bar I assume, without even clicking, that it's a
| paid service. Renaming the link to "Donate", or something
| similar might make more sense.
| riffic wrote:
| I'm pretty deep into Obsidian-space right now but I'm loving all
| these newfangled knowledge apps that push things a heck of a lot
| further than we had previously with bloat like evernote et al.
| pmarreck wrote:
| "If you want publish them" should probably be "If you want to
| publish them"
| mattstrayer wrote:
| thank you!
| not_your_vase wrote:
| Low-key I have been looking for something like Obsidian-but-
| freeish to try since a while - I think this is exactly what I
| searched for. Going to give it a go during the weekend
| definitely.
|
| On a different note, what's the long term sustainability plan?
| Relying on donations rarely works... I guess it's not very
| expensive to host text, but still, its cost is not 0. "Unlimited
| free forever" is either not free, doesn't last forever, or not
| unlimited. (Usually the 2nd one)
|
| Also, do you do any (automatic) content filtering? It is very
| easy to abuse pastebin services
| siegers wrote:
| (co-founder)
|
| Thanks for the comment and very valid points. When we initially
| started building we had subscription plans and more of a
| general revenue model. Over time we transitioned to the
| donation-based approach. We are open to revisiting the former
| if there is interest (and feedback) in the existing
| functionality or newer updates. I definitely understand the
| concern of "free forever" and open to input.
| maicro wrote:
| Need to look at the site more in general to see if it's for
| me, but just a note - https://www.lowercase.app/pricing/
| still references the subscription model.
| digging wrote:
| > Low-key I have been looking for something like Obsidian-but-
| freeish to try since a while
|
| Have you tried LogSeq? I think there are a couple other FOSS
| similar notes apps
| riffic wrote:
| There's also a Visual Studio Code extension ecosystem worth
| exploring that do similar functions (Dendron, Foam, etc)
| jamesgeck0 wrote:
| Silverbullet.md is another pretty good one which allows a lot
| of customization. I was able to recreate my (admittedly very
| basic) Obsidian workflow fairly quickly.
| greymalik wrote:
| > something like Obsidian-but-freeish
|
| I'm confused. Obsidian itself is free. You can choose to pay
| for their sync service if you need it, but there are
| alternatives for that that don't cost extra.
| zubairshaik wrote:
| I'm guessing free as in speech, not free as in beer. Obsidian
| is not open source [0]
|
| [0] https://obsidian.rocks/why-isnt-obsidian-open-source/
| throw383724 wrote:
| Obsidian is only free for personal use.
|
| If you take notes for work or for a side project that makes
| money you have to pay.
|
| I don't mind paying because it's worth it.
| DrBenCarson wrote:
| You can't use Obsidian for anything that makes money without
| buying an Enterprise license
| jjbickerstaffe wrote:
| When I last looked it was free for businesses of 1 person,
| no Enterprise licence required. But you would still have to
| pay for sync if needed.
| igtztorrero wrote:
| Dark mode please
| thetomcraig wrote:
| Nit Pick feedback: it should read: "the right _number_ of
| features", not "_amount_ of features". Other than that, love the
| look of the site :)
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Non native speaker here, can you detail why the later is
| incorrect?
| cole-k wrote:
| I'm guessing that "amount" is not quantized ("number" is).
| Let me be absolutely clear that most native speakers will not
| notice the distinction (even pedants like me missed this
| one).
|
| You'll also see people being pedantic about "less" versus
| "fewer," e.g. complaining about the "12 items or less" line
| being improper usage since items are quantized and therefore
| it should be "12 items or fewer."
| Alex63 wrote:
| It's probably mostly idiomatic. For native English-speakers
| it is more natural to use "number" when talking about things
| that are counted units that would be represented by integers
| (like marbles, or children, or features). "Amount" would be
| more appropriate when talking about something that you
| measure and represent with a floating point number (like
| butter, or gasoline/petrol, or risk). But an English-speaker
| will understand what you mean if you say "amount of features"
| instead of "number of features."
|
| And since we're being picky, it should be "the latter is
| correct", not "the later is correct."
| CharlesW wrote:
| "Number" is correct when referring to countable items (like
| "features"), while "amount" is correct for non-countable
| things (like "water" or "time").
| whiddershins wrote:
| Sorry, sibling responses still aren't quite answering this
| correctly.
|
| Number is for countable distinct things, and amount is for a
| quantity of a single thing. (Often a substance)
|
| So a number of sticks, a number of socks, a number of people.
| A number of eggs.
|
| An amount of flour, sugar, water, money, time.
|
| A number of minutes equals an amount of time.
| jaktet wrote:
| > A number of minutes equals an amount of time
|
| This is short and succinct and sums it up pretty well
| quartesixte wrote:
| Counterpoint:
|
| I know grammatically it isn't the most correct, but I don't see
| anything non-idiomatic about "amount of features".
|
| Reason: "Just the right amount" is a set, idiomatic expression.
| "Just the right amount of ___" is just extending the
| expression. IMO extending idiomatic expressions exempts it from
| a lot of the formal word-pairing conventions in English.
|
| But I'm no linguist.
| crashmat wrote:
| I think amount of is usually used for 'continuous' (I'm not
| sure on the word) substances like flour, water, or salt,
| rather than multiples of discreet objects.
| quartesixte wrote:
| I can also have:
|
| Just the right amount of cats Just the right amount of
| internet points Just the right amount of chutzpah
| akaij wrote:
| Depending on the flavour of the linguist, they could say "as
| long as the correct meaning is conveyed, go wild" :)
| pkulak wrote:
| I went through a bunch of note-taking apps before I settled on a
| git directory that's auto-synced once an hour. This bash script
| is all it takes. cd ~/notes if
| [[ ''$(git status --porcelain) ]]; then git stash save
| git pull --rebase git stash pop || true git
| add . git -c "user.name=Phil Kulak" -c
| "user.email=nope@kulak.us" commit -m "''$(date)" git
| push origin main else git pull fi
| mattstrayer wrote:
| honestly love the simplicity of this
| dvt wrote:
| Ah yes, the classic HN Dropbox response :) On a more serious
| note, I'm not into note-taking apps as much as your average
| HN'er, but there's probably a business here. If anything,
| Obsidian has at least been wildly successful these past few
| years (my dad loves it).
| darknavi wrote:
| And sensible merge conflict resolution vs normal cloud saves.
| pkulak wrote:
| Yeah, every year or so I get a merge conflict, and then the
| whole things stops syncing and it takes me a week to notice
| before I go in and resolve it. It's not perfect, but I can't
| be assed to fix something that happens once a year. :/
| darknavi wrote:
| Maybe you can beep the motherboard if it happens. Would
| only take a few hours to notice then :)
| mike_ivanov wrote:
| I'm doing the same with ZimWiki, except for running the sync
| script as a custom tool in the UI.
| bartvk wrote:
| What about mobile? Or don't you take notes there?
| escapecharacter wrote:
| For me, this is always the gap that feels missing. - I want
| to take and view notes on various devices: mobile, personal
| computer, work computer, randomly logged in ad-hoc machine. -
| I want notes to not require me to be online all the time
| while writing (I work a lot on plans, or in remote locations
| without reliable internet) - I want notes to make reasonable
| assumptions about syncing, biasing on the side of avoiding
| data loss over the appearance of magically "just working" - I
| want to be able to search across all notes at the same time
| as any device's file system.
|
| Simplenote used to solve this. Then, recently, they started
| to become less reliable at the same time as having a very
| large subscription price increase. Apple Notes is now okay,
| but awkward to log in or sync with a non-Apple device. I
| tried having a bunch of .txt files synced via Dropbox, but
| while the Dropbox mobile app will let you view offline files,
| it won't let you edit them unless online.
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| is iCloud.com really that bad?
| pkulak wrote:
| I set up PolyGit on my phone. So I can take new notes by
| pulling, editing, and the pushing. It's a pain, not gonna
| lie. But I don't take notes away from any of my computers
| that often. Mostly I'm in a work meeting, reading an email,
| something like that, so it doesn't come up too often.
|
| All it would take to be awesome would be to find a mobile git
| app that required fewer button presses, so I'm hopeful.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| Why the two single quotes before the subshells?
| pkulak wrote:
| Oh, that's my bad. I copied this from my Nix config and
| that's how you escape.
|
| https://git.sr.ht/~pkulak/nix/tree/main/item/home/default.ni.
| ..
|
| https://git.sr.ht/~pkulak/nix/tree/main/item/home/default.ni.
| ..
| laurels-marts wrote:
| But what do you use to actually take the notes? After trying a
| bunch of apps I settled on VS Code with a custom Profile that
| has all the settings, extensions and UI states that I need for
| taking markdown notes.
|
| I realised that I already spend at minimum 8-10 hours a day in
| VS Code, why learn another app with all the different quirks,
| UI and key bindings...
| enasterosophes wrote:
| To this, it works well to add inotifywait to detect when files
| are saved. You can pipe the save detections to a loop that git-
| commits only that one file, providing a more granular history
| with very little cost.
| osigurdson wrote:
| It would be nice to have a zero trust model for something like
| this.
| neilellis wrote:
| Congratulations, looks like a cool app, I'm hoping I'll
| eventually catch up with being feature rich like yours. I've only
| just started, being hacking on it for a month now but am looking
| to do something pretty similar. I think we've had a few ideas the
| same - and amrescratching the same itch. Your 4 years ahead
| though :-) :-) https://edit-this.page/help is my humble work in
| progress.
|
| Best of luck to you all!
| KolyaKornelius wrote:
| What is the user exit strategy? Can I export all notes? In which
| formats?
| mattstrayer wrote:
| no export is available at the moment, but we are considering
| adding that in. What formats would you want to be able to
| export to?
| gitinit wrote:
| This seems amazing, except for the fact that it's not open source
| and can't be self-hosted.
|
| That, to me at least, is the most important part of a note-taking
| app.
| siegers wrote:
| This is something that we've discussed quite a bit and not
| completely off the table.
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(page generated 2024-05-03 23:00 UTC)