Every time I see a new note taking app, I get excited that it might finally be the one that will satisfy my desired workflow. But every time I end up disappointed that nobody seems to think about this space in the way that I do.
Here is my basic premise: I want all of my notes to be dated, and I want them to tell a story of not just what I was thinking, but when.
Time is so fundamental to note taking. A note is never "This is my canonical position on X", it is always "this is what I am thinking about X today." But note taking apps rarely seem to bring time to the forefront.
Think about an issue tracker like GitHub issues. When you view an issue, you see a timestamped history of everything that has been added to the conversation and when. It tells a story of how the understanding of that issue evolved over time, and specific actions that were taken at specific times. I find this invaluable, and I want my own personal notes to work in the same way.
"So just use GitHub issues in a private repo." Well, GitHub issues isn't exactly what I'm looking for. Specifically:
- I want to use #tagging. If I click on a tag, I want a GitHub issues-like timeline view for all notes that include that tag. That way I can categorize notes across multiple dimensions.
- I want more control over how the notes are stored (Git is ideal, I can mirror the repo wherever I want).
- I want more control over how and when I publish the notes: if I'm taking work-specific notes, I want the option to publish them on an internal company server.
A Jekyll-based blog fulfills these criteria pretty well, except:
- Jekyll is primarily focused on publishing a website, not local viewing. To view locally you have to manually run a server in the background all the time ("jekyll serve") and there is a lot of HTML/CSS/configuration cruft that is overkill for note taking.
- Since Jekyll is not an app, it has no streamlined workflow for adding notes on mobile.
If anyone knows an app that is a good match for what I'm looking for, please let me know!
Here is my basic premise: I want all of my notes to be dated, and I want them to tell a story of not just what I was thinking, but when.
Time is so fundamental to note taking. A note is never "This is my canonical position on X", it is always "this is what I am thinking about X today." But note taking apps rarely seem to bring time to the forefront.
Think about an issue tracker like GitHub issues. When you view an issue, you see a timestamped history of everything that has been added to the conversation and when. It tells a story of how the understanding of that issue evolved over time, and specific actions that were taken at specific times. I find this invaluable, and I want my own personal notes to work in the same way.
"So just use GitHub issues in a private repo." Well, GitHub issues isn't exactly what I'm looking for. Specifically:
- I want to use #tagging. If I click on a tag, I want a GitHub issues-like timeline view for all notes that include that tag. That way I can categorize notes across multiple dimensions.
- I want more control over how the notes are stored (Git is ideal, I can mirror the repo wherever I want).
- I want more control over how and when I publish the notes: if I'm taking work-specific notes, I want the option to publish them on an internal company server.
A Jekyll-based blog fulfills these criteria pretty well, except:
- Jekyll is primarily focused on publishing a website, not local viewing. To view locally you have to manually run a server in the background all the time ("jekyll serve") and there is a lot of HTML/CSS/configuration cruft that is overkill for note taking.
- Since Jekyll is not an app, it has no streamlined workflow for adding notes on mobile.
If anyone knows an app that is a good match for what I'm looking for, please let me know!