
Standard Notes – A notes app with a focus on longevity, portability, and privacy - mikecarlton
https://standardnotes.org/
======
felixrieseberg
Excellent effort! However, it also introduces a _major_ security hole:

The Electron Desktop App simply loads an index.html which points at remote
JavaScript. That's crazy dangerous - if that endpoint gets compromised,
nothing keeps the attacker from running `rm -rf /` on every user's machine.

I'm a member of the Electron maintainers group and fully realize that this is
partly on us for not educating better. Remote code should never run with full
privileges - consider using a `webview` instead, which can be sandboxed.

~~~
mobitar
Gotcha, easy fix, will get that out asap. We did this as a way to push out
changes quicker since we were still making major improvements often.

~~~
pvg
I think you're not at a point where you should be advertising security as a
feature (rather than eventual goal) of your product.

~~~
golanggeek
What you found are just bugs. But their main point is indeed security -
compared to say simplenote. Here everything is indeed encrypted and they have
no way of reading our data

~~~
pvg
Are they just bugs?

    
    
        encryptText(text, key) {
            var keyData = CryptoJS.enc.Hex.parse(key);
            var ivData  = CryptoJS.enc.Hex.parse("");
            var encrypted = CryptoJS.AES.encrypt(text, keyData, { iv: ivData,  mode: CryptoJS.mode.CBC [...]
    

The basic encryption operation seems to be AES CBC with a constant, reused IV.

~~~
mobitar
Items are encrypted with random keys. No two items are ever encrypted with
same key. Thus no need for IV, and makes implementations across platforms
simpler.

~~~
pvg
Is there actually any description of how you're encrypting, how you manage and
distribute keys, why you believe this is secure, why you're not using an
authenticated mode, etc? "Thus no need for IV" when your desktop client just
pulls a minified blob from somewhere is not particularly reassuring.

~~~
mobitar
Yes, it's all here:
[http://standardfile.org/#encryption](http://standardfile.org/#encryption)

------
bitexploder
This is a really cool project. I love the spirit of this. I would also mention
nvALT has a similar philosophy in terms of file format and supports Markdown
and fast searching of notes. Sadly it is closed source and Mac only so it does
not have the same overall philosophy (despite the note output being very
portable).

I feel this will work for a lot of people, especially less technical users. I
have settled on Org and or Markdown, to Dropbox if required sync. Emacs and or
any other text editor will just works. That said just taking notes in a
consistent place and in a consistent format gets you 80% of the way there.
Grep and find still work. I almost always end up back there :)

Org is its own little world, but I know that I can always edit an Org file on
any computer with my preferred editor.

I like this trend of back to basics in computing (even if it is running in a
web browser on my desktop), its goals are nice.

edit:nvalt is open source. Mac only and as others pointed out not updated too
regular but I know people who love it.

~~~
kmf
nvALT is open-source! It's a fork of Notational Velocity, on the developer's
GitHub: [https://github.com/ttscoff/nv](https://github.com/ttscoff/nv)

That being said, I don't think it's updated too regularly. Brett is working on
a complete rewrite of the app (which will be a paid version):
[http://brettterpstra.com/2015/09/14/an-nvalt-and-more-
status...](http://brettterpstra.com/2015/09/14/an-nvalt-and-more-status-
report/)

~~~
nextos
There's similar support in org-mode, in case you are interested in Emacs or
use another platform:

[http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/org-
velocity.html](http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/org-velocity.html)

~~~
stinkytaco
Also deft, if you are not using org-mode.

[http://jblevins.org/projects/deft/](http://jblevins.org/projects/deft/)

~~~
edwintorok
I use deft after trying a few other alternatives. In the end I realized that I
didn't want to learn another tool just for taking notes, so it had to be both
something simple and something that integrates with my editor (Emacs or Vim).

------
crazy2be
Zim[0] (open source) has a lot of these features. It saves your notes as plain
markdown files, but has a WYSIWYG editor. You can link between notes. Add
pictures, formatting, etc.

There is also a huge number of extensions, back when I was doing math stuff I
used the LaTeX one pretty often. Another useful one is the calculator
extension, which can evaluate simple expressions like 3 * 5 =.

Since it's just plain markdown files, you can save to Dropbox, git, NFS, or
anything else really. There's even a built-in plugin to automatically commit
to git periodically (useful for standalone notebooks, since you don't really
want to be opening git manually).

I've yet to find anything better, although I do wish it had better support for
"anonymous" notes. That is, notes that I don't really feel like organizing or
naming.

[0] [http://www.zim-wiki.org/index.html](http://www.zim-wiki.org/index.html)

~~~
tim6754
Zim is great. The only thing it is lacking is something like Evernote clipper.

~~~
mrbill
Evernote clipper (or "save this page as a note") is the only thing keeping me
on that platform.

~~~
H4CK3RM4N
Zim does have support for embedding images, or links to other files/websites.

~~~
tim6754
Zim has support for embedded images, but not Web clipping.

------
okhudeira
Related, here's a post by the author [1] about Evernote which sheds light on
why he went about making this. Interesting read.

[1] [https://medium.com/@mobitar/evernote-is-what-happens-when-
yo...](https://medium.com/@mobitar/evernote-is-what-happens-when-you-mix-vc-
with-a-notes-app-8a6a9ce5a9c5#.nz37bg7pd)

~~~
jsmthrowaway
Interesting is one word for that, given the main thesis that venture capital
is universally to blame for the failure of centralized things we rely upon
(with zero evidence to support this assertion), and that building another
centralized service with less functionality is somehow the better answer.
Speaking personally, I completely rely upon PDFs and images and things
accompanying my notes because of the nature of the work I do (I have about
4,700 pages of research and almost a gigabyte of imagery all tied together in
a Scrivener project for a single piece of work, for example), and the frozen
feature set so proudly advertised smacks of "people need to take notes exactly
the way I do," which is an immediate turn-off for me. That it's taken further
and somewhat arrogantly called "standard" notes really chills me on liking
this product at all, given that it completely and intentionally omits useful
things to a lot of people -- including me. Then there are extensions, of
course, pushing out all the useful features to extensions which will work
_even less_ over time.

Maybe some people will like this, but the motivations and decisions just seem
ill thought out so far, particularly when it's "VC is going to kill Evernote,
so you should rely upon a hostname I personally administer instead and you get
exactly what I give you" as the main call to action when I go to the page.

~~~
apsdsm
I agree. I spent quite a few years working in Digital Preservation, and what
we found is that as evil as you paint them, a big corporation with lots of
money will outlast an individual with pure motivations. That's why we can
still read DOC files today.

Speaking realistically, investing your personal data in this project is
currently a _much_ greater risk than using Evernote.

~~~
sasvari
_> Speaking realistically, investing your personal data in this project is
currently a much greater risk than using Evernote._

I fail to see any _risk_ in investing your personal data in this project.
According to the website you can simply output your data to a text file:

    
    
      - [..]
      - exporting all data as a human readable file
      - [..]
    

(I have no stake in this app, but personally use vimwiki and thus have all my
notes in markdown text files anyway)

~~~
CJefferson
The app doesn't work without an active web connection -- it's just an empty
shell. So if the website goes down, I've still lost my data unless I back it
up in advance.

------
autocorr
With a lot of notes and lists in Google Keep, I always wonder when Google will
kill it like Reader. So, I'm really behind projects like this focusing on
openness and durability. I hope it's a success!

I do academic research as a grad student and it's very reassuring to know that
if my office doesn't burn down or get ransacked, that my pen-and-paper
research notebooks will be there for reference to see what I did on a past
project. It was an exceptionally cool experience when visiting the NRAO[1]
Archives[2] to pick up and read 70+ year old research notebooks from
pioneering astronomers. It seems like it would take a great deal of vigilance
to make digital notes endure for that long.

However, digital notes are useful, especially for brain dumping something
quickly, so I've settled on vimwiki[3] in a git repository. They're just
markdown utf-8 textfiles in a folder hierarchy, and I figure vim and vimscript
extensions are pretty darn future proof. It's also useful when traveling and
being given a guest Linux work station to use that it doesn't require admin
privileges to get working: just git clone the vimwiki repo into ~/.vim and
clone the notes repo.

[1] [https://www.nrao.edu](https://www.nrao.edu)

[2] [https://www.nrao.edu/archives/](https://www.nrao.edu/archives/)

[3] [https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki](https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki)

~~~
gglitch
My principle, maybe my only, problem with paper is appending to notes I've
already closed by opening new notes after them. I realize there are methods
like the bullet journal's that address this, but they've felt clumsy to me.
Did you notice any particularly effective nonlinear note taking style being
used by these astronomers?

~~~
autocorr
You know, you would think for something as basic as writing down what you're
doing there would be an optimized way passed down like some sort of tribal
knowledge. But from having asked around, the note taking process spans the
entire spectrum from old school big research notebooks, collated three ring
binders, instances of mediawiki, evernote, to just a bunch of .txt files
scattered throughout their filesystem. However Evernote is probably the most
common--being able to easily copy-paste plots and images seems to ease a big
pain point.

For paper notes, I know exactly what you're talking about. I think such a non-
linear problem can be solved with different note taking methods as "short,
medium, and long-term storage". I find my research notebook useful as a dated
"what am I doing right now", free-form input useful for equations and
diagrams, and short term to-do lists (which are more useful for outlining the
steps needed to actually get something done). However, it's not very easy to
lookup info by topic and it's time consuming to write out detailed
explanations in long-hand. I haven't had much luck with the bullet journal
system or similar because it's just hard to keep those indices up to date. At
this point I find it most useful to type up the "cooked" knowledge into
vimwiki at various points. These semi-fully formed digital notes can then be
used as the building blocks for the "long-term storage" of more durable works
like journal articles or papers.

------
moonlighter
Quiver is another awesome note taking app, native and superfast on macOS:

[http://happenapps.com](http://happenapps.com)
[https://github.com/HappenApps/Quiver/wiki/Getting-
Started](https://github.com/HappenApps/Quiver/wiki/Getting-Started)

~~~
jacquesc
Been using it for about a year, and like it. But switching off because it
doesnt sync with anything and I cant use it on my Android.

~~~
moonlighter
It does sync: [https://github.com/HappenApps/Quiver/wiki/Cloud-
Syncing](https://github.com/HappenApps/Quiver/wiki/Cloud-Syncing)

------
sapeien
What's wrong with good old notepad.exe and *.txt files? Notepad (nano, ed,
other lightweight editors) has a quality that this doesn't: unstructured text.
When writing I don't want to think about metadata, I just want to write, not
think about titles, tags, etc. One could probably infer a title based on the
first line. I think forcing structured data input is the wrong approach and it
is better to use NLP or other methods of inference.

On a technical level, this seems to be a desktop web app which is overkill for
a simple text editor. Compare its performance to notepad.exe which ran fine on
machines from decades ago.

~~~
Starwatcher2001
That's pretty much what I do, except using UltraEdit as the editor. Virtually
everything I've needed to make notes on over the last 22 years are in a folder
hierarchy of flat text files. Over the years I've tried HTML, DOC, WRI (Word
pad), but find TXT is the best for longevity.

All data is stored on several USB keys that are backed up in several places.
Private files are stored in a truecrypt volume. Encryption and media are
easily changed if that becomes necessary and technology changes.

My collection currently holds 1508 files from Feb 1995 to today, in around 100
categories. For searching, I use the old ZTree, usually finds what I want in
seconds.

~~~
brokenmachine
I would like to do something similar but I would like markdown support and the
ability to link to other documents/media.

Any ideas, hn experts?

------
barrkel
I use my own notepad app - ScratchPad[1] - to solve a similar problem with a
slightly different emphasis.

I wasn't concerned with privacy, but very concerned with longevity,
portability, and _history_. My app auto-saves every few seconds, and records a
log of the diff. The log tracks the entire edit history of the file, so you
can follow the evolution of the document, undo changes, whatever.

Logged revisions also effectively ends up as a text collapsing function - just
keep the first line or so of a block of text and delete the remainder, and
then when you want to open up that block of text again, just scroll back in
the history.

I've been using it for years on Windows and Linux. I haven't yet had a need to
port it to OS X. I keep my notes in Dropbox for distribution and so I can
access them on my phone. If the text file is edited out of sync with the log,
the next time the file is opened inside scratchpad, it simply records a diff
between the new state and the expected state from the log.

The format is just plain text. No fancy formatting. It's set up to use Dina,
as that's my default font on all my systems.

[1] [https://github.com/barrkel/scratch](https://github.com/barrkel/scratch)

~~~
drittich
Nice - I was about to rewrite a sticky note thing I have been using (saves to
DropBox, too), but I have forked yours and will start from there instead.

------
corbinpage
Reminds me of Simple Note, which I've been using ever since Evernote became
slow and bloated ([https://simplenote.com/](https://simplenote.com/)).

~~~
kmf
Bear App ([http://www.bear-writer.com](http://www.bear-writer.com)) is pretty
neat too - it has Markdown support and uses iCloud Sync, which is probably the
best part of Apple's Notes app.

~~~
dvcrn
I on the other hand find Bear horrible. You are completely locking yourself
into their system and if you stop paying the monthly fee, you even loose the
ability to sync your things to your phone or Mac.

On top of that, I find their organization features not very good. The ability
to tag notes seems neat at first but it can become very messy very fast.
Completely freeform tagging requires a lot of discipline to not get out of
hand, nested tags make this even more difficult. This is especially true for a
notes app that is supposed to last you over many many years and possibly hold
thousands of notes at some point.

I personally bought Ulysses and use that as my notes taking app for text-only
documents, and Apple Notes for short-lived image related notes.

~~~
sridca
Ulysses is interesting, but what justifies its high purchase cost (the Mac app
costs over 60 CAD)?

~~~
gglitch
I own, use, and enjoy Ulysses, but I wouldn't buy it at its current price.

~~~
gglitch
Edit: It's fantastic software, but I wish it handled images as simply as
Quiver.

~~~
dvcrn
I agree. If inlining images would be as easy as in Bear, I would be very very
happy. As it stands, I have to preview my document to see the images

------
Semiapies
I _like_ the broad idea, and I appreciate their making this open, but this
design leaves me cold. It's basically a Notational Velocity with central
servers and one of those clumsy toggle-to-preview Markdown interfaces.

Between stuff like this and Workflowy, I think there'd be a market for a
cloud-based version of org-mode with nice, non-Emacsy front ends that
supported the key org-mode capabilities.

~~~
qwertyuiop924
But that will take _forever_ to make. Even for the key subsets, because org is
huge. And if you use the spreadsheets, forget it.

And some stuff, like babel (which is probably important to devs), depends on
other emacs packages...

~~~
axlprose
is it _really_ that important for a non-emacs client to support 100% of org's
features?

You can still always open complicated org files in emacs if you really need
to, but that shouldn't stop people from attempting to develop a lighter client
alternative that's more convenient for the browser or mobile, for example.

Even just using a subset of orgs features, it can still be significantly more
powerful than just plain old markdown. Most of my org notes would be ok to
edit with nothing more complicated than the labels+tags+checkboxes+tables
features. Would be mildly annoying to manually update a few things here and
there, but it'd still be far better than nothing.

~~~
qwertyuiop924
>is it really that important for a non-emacs client to support 100% of org's
features?

No. Even babel's not really necessary.

But even implementing a broad subset might be hard. However, there is already
rudimentary support for the org format outside org, so it may not be that bad.

------
tylercubell
> What I write is important to me. I want to be able to read it fifty years
> from now. A hundred years from now. So where do I go? Apple Notes? Google?
> Other private, short-lived, growth-oriented companies? No. What we need is
> something that focuses on durability and not growth.

I know HN is for the tech crowd, but can I suggest something so simple it
sounds stupid? If you want to read your notes 50 years from now use a pen and
paper. Go ahead, downvote away. Yes, you won't be able to index them and
search them and yadda yadda yadda but you're writing _notes_, not full-fledged
documents.

What is a note? "A brief record of facts, topics, or thoughts, written down as
an aid to memory." according to Google.

I keep a small Moleskine notebook and a pen with me to write down notes and
ideas. James Altucher uses a waiter's pad. It works just fine. I know it's a
radical thing to say but technology isn't always the solution to our problems.

~~~
andreareina
>> I want to be able to read it fifty years from now ...

> Yes, you won't be able to index them ...

The availability of old information is strongly related to the ability to
index it. Your notes from ten years ago may be physically there, but how long
is it going to take to find what you need?

I use pen and paper all the time but only for ephemera. Its advantage is that
I'm not constrained by having to write pure text and I have a 2d surface, but
once the thoughts are down and concrete the important bits are transcribed
into my org-mode file, which even allows me to transcribe diagrams and math
faithfully. I've read Altucher's words on using a waiter's pad and he says the
same thing -- it's for ephemera. I've seen the way many people use physical
notes and it's largely the same thing. The ones that do use paper as long-term
storage have a separate set of notes just for that, and transcribe from short-
term to long-term anyway, at which point the other liabilities of paper come
into play.

Paper is heavy, and takes space. Over the years I've amassed a copious amount
of notes that haven't yet been digitized. Without exaggerating, they're enough
to fill a suitcase. That kind of mass is an anchor, and when I move I get to
make a decision: bring them, or leave them in storage. Notes I can't get at
might as well not exist.

My ideas, understanding of things also evolve over time, and if my notes are
to be faithful to that they should allow the same mutability. Even if I want
to preserve the history of the evolution, I'll want to be able to insert the
new things where they make sense -- a new consequence here, a parenthetical
that amends the previous thought there.

Paper worked well for persistence when that was all we had, but we have much
better now.

~~~
tylercubell
> I've read Altucher's words on using a waiter's pad and he says the same
> thing -- it's for ephemera. I've seen the way many people use physical notes
> and it's largely the same thing.

My thoughts exactly. When I think of notes, grocery lists and todo lists come
to mind. In my opinion, the function of note taking is comparable to RAM. It's
short-term and ephemeral. Notes may contribute to a long-term document that
should absolutely be digitized, but storing the notes themselves defeats their
purpose in my view.

~~~
andreareina
Gotcha. Your quote at the top regarding long-term storage had me thinking in
that direction (the long-term stuff is still "notes" to me).

------
asciimo
I have settled on Google Keep for my note-taking, for ease of use and
durability. I like that Standard Notes is similar, but adds privacy and the
option for self-hosting. Being open source and extensible is a bonus!

~~~
jacquesc
I like Google Keep as well, but I can only really use it for "simple" notes
that I take while mobile. The lack of any kind of formatting system is a
detriment I think.

Also, the UI on desktop is pretty poor. A native mac app would be a huge
boost.

~~~
Philomath
Agree!

It's a shame there is no public Keep API to play with. I would write the app
myself!

------
xolb
For ones like me that never heard about AppImage before (shame on me), you
just need to "chmod a+x file.AppImage", then execute as a normal (./) [0].

[0] [http://appimage.org/](http://appimage.org/)

~~~
mobitar
What's the best format to distribute Linux apps?

~~~
mikewhy
Anybody's guess.

Seriously, .deb or .rpm is okay, but what users will really want is a proper
apt/rpm repository, which is for sure more effort.

I honestly prefer zip or AppImage. Distribution independent, and it's super
easy to get auto updating in Electron.

~~~
probonopd
Since an AppImage is just a compressed filesystem, you can also extract its
content very similar to a zip file. But you then will miss out on the easy
binary delta updates using AppImageUpdate, and have an extra step of
unpacking, and will need more storage space.

------
sudosteph
Love it so far! I'm going to play around with hosting my own server, looks
like the current one is here? [https://github.com/standardfile/ruby-
server/tree/master](https://github.com/standardfile/ruby-server/tree/master)

A couple things that could be useful: 1\. Add version tags to the git repo,
that way I don't have to wonder what's changed between deploys 2\. Official
standard notes docker image or dockerfile in repo 3\. CloudFormation or
Terraform template link in the README would really sweet.

Actually... If I can finish up the work I'm actually supposed to be doing I
can send you some of this stuff later...

Noticed you're using AWS. Everything looks great, but now that you're getting
serious traffic you may want to pre-emptively sign up for business support (if
you haven't already), I noticed they give you a free month for the "self-
starter" startup pack: [https://aws.amazon.com/activate/self-
starters/](https://aws.amazon.com/activate/self-starters/) . I used to work
for AWS Support, I'm not affiliated any more, but there is a huge difference
in response times, also the chat and phone call options are much faster, and
you can really ask about anything not just specific problems (architecture
guidance, best practices).

~~~
mobitar
Thanks, now that I know people are using the Ruby server I'll start versioning
it. I agree, those items would be great to have. Will definitely try to get to
it. In the meantime, feel free to submit a pull request for any of those items
and I'll be happy to merge it in.

------
diimdeep
Seems like this project doesn't offer much at moment except cool name.

I use flat files in markdown since 2010 with Sublime Text with extensions:
MarkdownEditing, Table Editor

All power of Sublime Text, Super fast full text search, Full index of all
header sections in all files trough Cmd+Shift+R, Full index of all file names
trough Cmd+P

\---------------------------------------

$ cd ~/Dropbox/Notes && cloc .

Language | files | blank | comment | code

Markdown | 773 | 21229 | 10 | 67758

\---------------------------------------

All that within Dropbox directory, accessible anywhere.

There was interesting attempts before...
[http://www.acuriousmix.com/2014/09/03/designing-a-
personal-k...](http://www.acuriousmix.com/2014/09/03/designing-a-personal-
knowledgebase/)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8270759](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8270759)

~~~
psy-q
Needs transparent encryption though, so you can push your notes to
untrustworthy places. I do that in vim with a Markdown file and the GPG
extension for vim. You can just open a .md.gpg file that way.

------
PaulMest
I've had serious difficulty[1][2][3] with Apple's Notes.app over the past 18
months. So much so that I've written some JXA (Javascript for Automation) code
to extract all of my notes to self-contained HTML files.

Now that I have 923 notes in HTML files on my hard drive, I can do whatever I
want with them. My current plan is to import them into OneNote because they
have good app coverage across platforms and they just released what looks like
a pretty solid API that lets you import and export notes.

Maybe I (or somebody else) can write an importer for Standard Notes to make it
easy to switch from Apple Notes?

[1] Notes not syncing across devices

[2] Search not working at all on Mac

[3] Moving subfolders of notes in the app makes the notes completely disappear

~~~
mobitar
The file format for Standard Notes is pretty straightforward, wouldn't imagine
being too difficult to write an importer: [http://standardfile.org/#import-
export](http://standardfile.org/#import-export)

~~~
mobitar
The Evernote converter lives in this repo:
[https://github.com/standardnotes/sntools](https://github.com/standardnotes/sntools)

If you ever decide to build an importer, feel free to submit a pull request
and I'd be happy to merge it.

------
dolany
This is incredible. I was going to pay a developer to create something like
this because I wanted its exact features so badly. A note-taking system that
works cross platform with local-encryption. I'm too happy right now!

------
eps
A screenshot or two would be really helpful.

~~~
mobitar
You can access the app without sign up here:
[https://app.standardnotes.org](https://app.standardnotes.org).

------
andrewwhartion
Very nice. Now all I need is the same thing but for all my photos so my kids
can dig through them in 30-50 years time, like I can do with my parents'
photos...

~~~
bigiain
It would be nice (and I'm looking for somewhere to move all my Flickr photos),
but it massively increases the resources required at the back end. Storing a
lifetime's worth of typed text is maybe tens or hundreds of megabytes. Many
people will generate that much data as photos in an afternoon.

~~~
eyepulp
I'm also looking to escape Flickr, and still have yet to find a good self-
hosted solution.

------
noajshu
I like this idea. It's remarkable how bad the Apple Notes apps are. I'm trying
to get started with Standard Notes but running into trouble. Both Standard
File servers are down:
[https://n3.standardnotes.org](https://n3.standardnotes.org)
[https://n1.standardnotes.co.uk](https://n1.standardnotes.co.uk)

~~~
mobitar
Hey, you should go to
[https://app.standardnotes.org](https://app.standardnotes.org). Those servers
are not meant to be visited. You plug those in into the app.

Edit: I should really set up redirects for those.

------
mcescalante
I love the idea of this, but I'm not a big fan of Electron apps. Simplenote
has worked amazingly for me for a few years now and has a nice native
application (yes, I know you can't host your own server)

------
buzzybee
I want to use this! The UX is giving me some difficulty. First I wondered how
to add a tag to a note and eventually discovered that dragging the tag on from
the sidebar worked. But now how do I remove the tag?

~~~
mobitar
To delete a tag simply click "File" in the notes list of the selected tag.
I've had this question come up before so I think it's time for a clearer way.

~~~
rabysh
That's for deleting a tag, but is it possible to remove a tag from a note?
(aka untag a note)

~~~
mobitar
I just noticed today that that isn't working as intended. Will be releasing a
revamped tags UI very soon that should make all this easier.

~~~
andrelaszlo
Just writing #tag would be nice... :)

------
qwertyuiop924
Of course, my question is: why this over Org?

I don't do a ton of notetaking, so it's not super relevant to me (I'm actually
largely on pen and paper). But I am curious why this might (or might not) be
better.

~~~
jimbokun
Is there a good mobile app for editing org mode content?

~~~
kaushalmodi
This is really good: [http://www.orgzly.com/](http://www.orgzly.com/)

~~~
iak8god
Thanks for posting this! I've found MobileOrg to be unusable.

------
djhworld
I use Dropbox Paper for my note taking, it has nice formatting options -
although I am acutely aware that Dropbox could drop it at any moment, so
something like this suddenly becomes very attractive.

~~~
coverband
Dropbox Paper has a decent web UI but its iOS app was 116 MB. By comparison,
the actual Dropbox iOS client is at 88 MB.

~~~
ajpalkovic
Sorry about that :( We're going to significantly reduce it soon.

------
mergy
Very cool. I left Evernote last month after many years of pro use. I was
spinning around and around but ended-up just (last weekend) going with Notes
sitting on my personal NextCloud install. Downside currently is the lack of
image support, but that fact that I'm hosting it makes up for that. There is
also an Android app.

[https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/notes](https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/notes)

[https://github.com/stefan-niedermann/nextcloud-
notes](https://github.com/stefan-niedermann/nextcloud-notes)

Looked at the other options out there and really just wanted to build off my
increasing NextCloud footprint on my own server.

~~~
criddell
The new Evernote client on iOS has me considering re-starting my subscription
there. They seem to have simplified things and refocused on their core purpose
and that's something I'd like to support.

------
tim6754
Great product. Embedded images and the ability to clip a website like ever
note clipper are the two features that I am looking forward to.

------
edgarvaldes
For note taking and simple task management, I have cycled through pen and
paper, plain text files, taskwarrior [1], hnb [2], ToDoList[3] et cetera.
Always looking for the perfect solution. I think it doesn't exist as a
standalone environment, but as a combination of (synced) app and some pen and
paper.

[1] [https://taskwarrior.org/](https://taskwarrior.org/)

[2] [https://linux.die.net/man/1/hnb](https://linux.die.net/man/1/hnb)

[3] [http://abstractspoon.weebly.com/](http://abstractspoon.weebly.com/)

~~~
webwanderings
Cycled through many, came back to keeping the old fashioned Google Docs (Word)
file. Just have a bookmarked link in the Chrome's toolbar. I envy those who've
been using Word file to collect information for many years, well, since the
beginning.

~~~
bgrohman
I've been using Google Keep for quick, short-lived notes and Google Drive for
long-lived notes. If Google would add support for tagging files in Drive, I'd
be able to switch to it completely.

At one point, I used a directory of text files synced with Dropbox, vim to
edit, and a few bash scripts and vim functions for tagging and searching. It
worked well except on mobile.

------
cabalamat
What I use for making notes is my CatWiki program (
[https://github.com/cabalamat/catwiki](https://github.com/cabalamat/catwiki)
).

This stores articles in a wiki in Markdown format as files on a local
filesystem, enabling:

\- portability. Any ascii text editor can read the files. One goal of the
system is that I can still read the files if the software isn't set up (e.g.
if installing on a new box).

\- longevity. Python, Flask and Markdown are not going away any time soon.
Even if they do, the files can still be read.

\- privacy. The files are never transmitted across the network. This is also a
disadvantage, of course :-).

~~~
udkl
Another option is TiddlyWiki :
[http://tiddlywiki.com/](http://tiddlywiki.com/)

It's basically a meta wiki in that it uses the same html file as the database.
So you get wiki features in a single file. It does have a helper jar to work
around browser security around file access.

Oh and it is insanely customizable and skinnable.

~~~
gglitch
I love Tiddlywiki. I'd be using it if it were easier with mobile.

------
majkinetor
I use gist together with
[https://gistlist.ksdev.pl/gists](https://gistlist.ksdev.pl/gists) which
allows me to tag them. There are number of apps that can allow me offline
editing and management such as ruby gem gist.

The main benefit is that, as it uses gist, you can use number of markup
languages - I have notes in rST, mardkown, textille or as pure
<inser_language> scripts with comments.

The other main benefit is that I am not locked in and notes are versioned.

Besides, you don't need any installs for this. I seriously don't get why
people still make note apps.

------
fvargas
Is it possible to use the application without connecting to a Standard File
server? The page mentions the ability to use Dropbox "for added redundancy and
peace of mind". But is it possible to use Dropbox as the only storage point? I
would prefer to use Dropbox over their server or hosting my own.

It seems to me the applications act as clients that allow you to interact with
your data. If so, why should it matter where the data is being fetched/stored?
Why is it necessary to interact with a Standard File server?

~~~
mobitar
Not yet, but this is definitely a use case we want to design for. It's not
that it's not possible, just we've built up towards extensions linearly, and
have started at the simple use case when you have an account. Not relying on
an SF account means Dropbox and Standard Notes will need to understand where
the last sync was, etc. Not impossible, but probably not trivial. But this has
been an oft requested feature, so it's definitely high on the list.

------
mxuribe
I applaud the authors here on the intent, especially for the aspects of
longevity, portability, and privacy. However, the app itself has a bit of a
ways to go. I downloaded, and ran it, and then noticed my (Win7) machine run
like 4 procs for the single app. I like the concept of electron-based apps,
really I do; they're just so heavy (machine-resource-wise anyway).

Also, it so closely resembles Laverna in UX; not exactly of course, but close
enough. I don't want to sound so negative, because I honestly do aprreciate
the authors for their work here (and again for their noble intent, which I
greatly appreciate)...and perhaps I'm a curmudgeon, but apps like this one and
laverna annoy me in the way that its more work getting at the actual data, if
- for example, I wish to sync it via other ways (instead of self-hosting,
etc.). I try a bunch of these note apps every so often, and I always go back
to zim wiki. Yes, zim wiki. Maybe zim wiki is not perfect, its UI is not the
most sophisticated, mobile is not its forte, and any sync of its files does
depend on another platform/service running (e.g. dropbox, etc.), etc....But at
least it is based on a conventional text file (with a small DB for
indexing/search)...and as such, I can really access/edit the data now and in
the future. I dislike having to think in terms of old school files, but apps
nowadays are not wholly reliable; databases get corrupted, internet
connections go down, a code defect makes the data in the db inaccessible or
not-so-easy to access, etc...Bringing me back always to zim.

Again, don't mean to be negative, and I applaud the authors for their
work...but I'm heading back to zim wiki.

~~~
mobitar
The way extensions work is that you can enable an arbitrary number of sync
providers all at once. So you can have Dropbox enabled, Google Drive, maybe
you even have a webserver on your computer so you run an extension from there
that writes to your local disk - you can sync to all 3 of these at the same
time. So it doesn't have to rely on a centralized server.

------
ytjohn
I'm on a macbook, and neither the desktop or web application (under chrome at
least) seems to recognize tab. Granted, I want my tab to be a configurable
number of spaces, but currently it does nothing. Also, there doesn't seem to
be any sign of auto indent.

Is tab support and auto indent planned? Or is this editor essentially a sort
of demo placeholder, with a goal of a different, feature-full editor
implementing the standard note synchronization bits?

~~~
mobitar
Thanks for bringing this up, we'll add tab support and other shortcuts in an
upcoming update.

------
TbobbyZ
There is also a standard file server software.

[https://standardfile.org/](https://standardfile.org/)

~~~
mahyarm
Reminds me of camlistore

------
pmontra
I'll give it a try as soon as there is an Android app. I'll run my own server.
I've seen that it's a very simple Rails 5 application. It requires MySQL but
by a quick inspection of the code it looks like that any db will do. I'm using
PostgreSQL on my server and I'll try to make it run with it.

~~~
mobitar
Yup any db should do.

------
jimwalsh
Always like seeing what people are building for note taking. I've left
Evernote for the system provided by the Synology guys. It works really well.
Having something you control soup to nuts though would be best. I always worry
about using any of these systems and how long I'll be able to 'have' my data.

------
tveyben
Perhaps I am missing something - but I am not able to find any support for
keyboard shortcuts…!

I tested on OS X (& briefly on the WEB), and expected CMD-N to generate a new
note, TAB to change focus between tags, notes and the actual note, ESC to
dismiss dialogs (the "Server" dialog) etc.

It looks as if it's 100% mouse-only driven at the moment - but otherwise it
would be really nice to use it to store my notes on my own server AND be able
to access across iOS, Mac Win etc - so I think there is great potential, but
simply so not understand that keyboard shortcuts have not been thought into
the application now it's a hacker-tool :-)

A good place to get inspiration for a web solution using keyboard shortcuts
100% is JIRA. just try to hit "." \- it's just brilliant (I quickly got very
addicted :-)

------
jamesrat
There are a few elements missing that I would really love to see. Mostly
native image upload support and embedding. Live Markdown preview WYSIWYG
editor.

[http://texts.io/](http://texts.io/) Came close.

I really hope that this project will develop into something better.

~~~
rspeer
What I'm hoping for is self-previewing Markdown -- where you use the
equivalent of syntax highlighting to approximate how the Markdown will be
rendered. Lines starting with # are bigger, links are links, and so on.
Bullets don't even need to be changed, except possibly in color.

The split-pane approach, with one Markdown pane and one WYSIWYG pane, is such
a waste of screen space, when self-previewing Markdown is all you need if
you're not trying to create a published document.

A former Show HN project, bluedocs.io, offered this by default. But now it's
defunct (and my notes are lost with it).

~~~
jeffsco
You could check out Typora: [https://typora.io](https://typora.io)

~~~
rspeer
Nice. That is exactly the approach to editing I want, especially in Source
Code Mode.

Of course, it's only an editor for local documents. I wonder if this could be
glued to Standard Notes as a backend somehow.

------
bootload
The self hosted back-end has a lot of moving parts. Why was the decision made
to use code instead of say a text file on EC2 via a simple web server? cf
[https://github.com/standardfile/ruby-
server/wiki/Deploying-a...](https://github.com/standardfile/ruby-
server/wiki/Deploying-a-private-Standard-File-server-with-Amazon-EC2-and-
Nginx)

Also how easy is it to use the editor API? Could you for instance create an
outliner editor?

Why was the choice made to take up 2/3 screen with tags, filename leaving only
1/3 screen for a note. Vim user, so it appears awkward to view RHS of screen
coming from a culturally LHS language, English?

~~~
mobitar
That implementation is just one implementation that specifically uses
Passenger and Nginx. So those are not necessarily dependencies of the core
server logic. The actual action is mostly handled by a single controller with
around 160 lines (ItemsController).

It could easily support an extension that allows saving simple text files to
S3.

Can you elaborate more on your last question? Not sure what you mean by editor
API.

~~~
bootload
_" Can you elaborate more on your last question? Not sure what you mean by
editor API."_

Instead of just simple notes, could you use the API to build an outliner? cf
Dave Winers fargo ~ [http://fargo.io](http://fargo.io)

 _" That implementation is just one implementation that specifically uses
Passenger and Nginx."_

Great to hear this.

------
richardboegli
Standard notes looks extremely interesting. You've done an AWESOME job thus
far.

I've had a brief play with the Web based version on my Android phone. It was a
bit of a struggle, but that was to be expected as it wasn't designed for that.

Initial feedback on tags

1) I found it hard to see which tags were associated with a note. Clicking
each tag to see what changes is a bit cumbersome and the search didn't seem to
pick up the tags? I would suggest an additional horizontal bar underneath the
body which shows which tags are assigned to a note.

2) In the list view of the notes, the tags should be visible too. I realise it
can be a bit of a struggle in terms of real estate, but it can be done.

I wrote the above before I noticed your comment, so these might be fixed in
the future[0]:

> I just noticed today that that isn't working as intended.

> Will be releasing a revamped tags UI very soon that should make all this
> easier.

If you have a wire frame / sketch or something which you can post so I can see
what you are envisioning for the revised UI that would be great.

I've got a UI design in mind which would improve the UX of the app without
adding additional complexity.

After you've add your tag improvements I might fork and have a go at
implementing what I have in mind.

Initial feedback on note list

3) Needs to have sorting, just like mail client, by date etc..

4) Option to specify date/time format, currently MM/DD/Y hh:mm AM/PM

I'm a big fan of YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM (Time in 24 hours). If you want to have it
standard choose that ;)

My initial feedback, is just that, initial. It is the first few things I
noticed and does not detract from the AWESOME work you've done so far.

Keep up it up!

[0]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13424055](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13424055)

------
josephagoss
I've been using Writer+ on Android that I have setup to Resilio sync to my
Raspberry Pi.

The Raspberry Pi has a script I wrote that runs GIT every minute to check for
changes and commit them if so.

I also Resilio sync this to any desktop I need and use a Markdown editor
called "MarkdownPad" on Windows.

With this setup I have version control running all the time from a 'server' I
control and have the ability to view and edit my notes on my phone and desktop
using a format that is never going away.

Just thought I would post this in case someone wanted to try the same thing.

------
rrdharan
Big fan of the approach. Would be a lot easier to use IMO if you could live
edit in Markdown rather than having to toggle back and forth between preview
mode and editing.

Also curious how hard it would be conceptually/architecturally to introduce
federated sharing and realtime collaboration concepts while maintaining the
data-centric approach; e.g. if all docs had GUIDs you could imagine having
realtime collab if two people agree on the same server, (or I guess some much
crazier P2P discovery thing if you want to get really wild with it).

~~~
mobitar
We want to do something like this through extensions. The goal of this app is
to last really long, so it has to stay simple, otherwise bloat, debt, and
inevitable abandon ensues.

Extensions are pretty powerful and can handle collaboration. You can build
things like revision control as well. Right now Dropbox sync is available as
an extension:
[https://standardnotes.org/extensions](https://standardnotes.org/extensions)

~~~
frio
It looks like extensions essentially fire off your note data to third parties.
Is there a method for extensions to add Javascript to the running application
instead?

~~~
mobitar
Data can be sent off either encrypted or decrypted, with encrypted by default.
Javascript extensions are unlikely as they would make the app really busy and
probably unmaintainable.

~~~
frio
OK, thanks :). The itch I'd like to scratch is some features from TaskPaper;
my ideal "Notes" app is an open-source, cross-platform combination of
TaskPaper and nvALT. However, adding nvALT-ish-ness and TaskPaper-ish-ness
would require some heavy UI extensions. I'll ignore the extensions API for now
and have a twiddle with the guts of the webapp. Cheers!

------
LorenzoLlamas
Goodness. Seriously? Another notes "app"? Longevity exists in ASCII text
(UTF-8 if you must be a Modernist). Portability exists in simple plain text
files. Privacy exists in keeping them on your own blankety-blank drive and
backing up your own files somewhere that isn't a fluffy cloud. Or back them up
there if you want.

Oh, now someone will say, but what about photos and images? What about
"clippings" from the web? Images are to be in a properly tagged image library.
And a dozen software solutions have already solved that. Documents are PDFs or
TIFFs or JPGs or.... something like that. Put them in, gasp, a "folder"
("directory" for geeks) and call it something like "documents".

I don't know what "notes" people are so desperate to save, but if they are
your own ramblings... plain-text. If they are writings, make a folder called
"writings". Use markdown or ReStructured Text if you must, but trust me, the
"must" is your must. No one else cares. It will all burn eventually.

Plain text will still be here as it has been for four decades. Your app,
OneNote, EverNote, NoteyNote, and all the rest will all burn. Or be hacked. Or
stolen. Or not be backwards-compatible with whatever new NiftyNote comes
along.

Plain-text. Stop making these. The problem was solved 40 years ago. Solve
something else. Maybe Cancer. Maybe how to install Windows 10 in 3 minutes or
less. Maybe public transportation.

But for all our sakes, no more Notes apps. You are actually accomplishing the
_opposite_ of what you set out to achieve - further distracting people from an
ancient standard which works Just Fine For Almost Everyone.

By the way, if you are That Guy (you the reader) who thinks your special (said
with a lisp) notes deserve better than Plain Text, you probably are wrong.

Same with To-Do list apps. Plain-text. Just write down your tasks - and then
go do them. Stop prioritizing, colorizing, making 'sub-tasks', attaching
deadlines, putting time estimates, "sharing" them with others (oh for the love
of all things holy, stop sharing anything), and adding javascrap drag and drop
junk to it. Either buy Microsoft Project and use that or use Plain Text. There
is no in-between - just clutter. Lots and lots of clutter.

~~~
rasengan0
Not sure why this comment in support of plain text was downvoted, but I
wholeheartedly agree that plain text is the way to go in your own or no
particular data format. Write now, parse later. Deft OrgMode emacs TheBrain
xml csv tsv json md vim vimwiki tiddlywiki mediawiki evernote nv freemind i
can go on and on... I tried them all and the only the ones that stay will
support human readable plain text. For me that is line base unix utf-8 Trust
your future self in 10 years not having to look up a data spec. grep awk find
are friends for life

------
haddr
What's the difference between Simplenote or notational velocity?

------
infectoid
Can I save notes on my device while in airplane mode and then have them sync
when I have a connection again?

I don't always have an internet connection when I want to make a note or write
something.

~~~
mobitar
Yes, both iOS and web/desktop clients support offline mode. Android will too
as soon as it's released (shortly).

~~~
infectoid
Doesn't seem to be the case in iOS 10.2 on iPhone 6s.

[http://imgur.com/RypAJcY](http://imgur.com/RypAJcY)

edit: Kept popping up this message as I was trying to type in airplane mode.

------
turdnagel
This looks great! I'm still looking for the best replacement for Vesper
[[http://vesperapp.co/](http://vesperapp.co/)], which the developers abandoned
since it wasn't making money. It looks like Standard Notes has a lot of the
same features, but part of what I loved about Vesper was how _nice_ the
interface was. Standard Notes looks good but I'd love if it had a more Vesper-
esque iOS app.

~~~
mobitar
Vesper-esque apps are more difficult to maintain, and thus inevitably shut
down :)

~~~
turdnagel
Could be. I'm not sure what that means, though. Do you mean having a more
custom UI?

~~~
mobitar
Yeah, custom UI is really hard to build and later hard to maintain as SDKs
pivot and change. Best to go standard and things will have a higher chance of
continuing to work after OS level updates.

------
DavideNL
I never understood why something like this didn't exist yet; local encryption,
cross-platform sync and open source (i'd have payed for it.)

...just needs a dark theme now :-)

~~~
haddr
Laverna does exactly the same, it even looks the same :)

~~~
0xCMP
I've always found Laverna buggy.

------
robynsmith
Really nice effort!

It seems really "fast" and it supports markdown! I'm super happy about this.

As a longtime Evernote user, this app is highly comparable. The choice to only
allow tags is interesting, and I think I could live with that.

That being said, the lack of support for:

\- Images (I should be able attach an image inline into the document)

Would make it difficult for me to switch. That being said, I love the markdown
and this is definitely an amazing MVP! Good job!

~~~
mobitar
Thanks! Extensions should allow for image and file upload functionality.

~~~
robynsmith
+1

Thanks. I'll have to give it a try.

If it supports images I may well switch.

If you wanted to import notes from Evernote, what would be the best strategy
for that? Are there any already written tools for that?

I think I'd basically have to convert my notebooks to tags for it to make
sense in this app.

~~~
mobitar
Yes see here for Evernote import tool:
[https://standardnotes.org/tools](https://standardnotes.org/tools)

------
nimnio
"If you're tech savvy, you can even host your own Standard File server."

This would be a perfect candidate for
[https://sandstorm.io/](https://sandstorm.io/). As far as hosting servers go,
I'm not tech-savvy, but thanks to Sandstorm I'm hosting my own Git repo,
Davros file share, Ghost blog, etc.

------
spott
I have been enjoying using Boostnote[0] lately, which is very similar in style
to this application, but a little more featureful.

I wonder how hard it would be to add the cloud server as a backend to
boostnote...

[0][https://github.com/BoostIO/Boostnote](https://github.com/BoostIO/Boostnote)

------
emsy
I started 2 or 3 similar side projects that went nowhere, so my current setup
is still an iPhone that stores notes on my private IMAP server and a
Thunderbird plugin to edit the notes on my PC. I'm extraordinarily thankful
that this comes to an end. I'll gladly donate as soon as they add a donate
button.

------
snowpanda
This is so great. This and an encrypted calendar are some of the few things I
was missing in my daily workflow.

~~~
Fnoord
There are standards for calendar. iCal/CalDAV. Here is a free server [1].
Nextcloud can be hosted via HTTPS, too.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar_and_Contacts_Server](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar_and_Contacts_Server)

------
twhb
I love the idea, I have for a while. I hope to see this project grow. But,
without a rich text editor it's not the efficient option. I've done Markdown
notes before, rich text notes are much faster to read and write. Enough to
make me abandon principle and just get it done.

~~~
eldavido
Just want to go on-record as saying I stridently disagree.

There are too many rich text formats. Many are undocumented, proprietary, or
otherwise not well-supported. They're hard to revision control, which means
harder to sync across computers and among groups of people.

The hardest thing about this project, which I love, is going to be saying "no"
to almost every single feature request people propose. I'll be interested to
see how well the authors can hold the line.

I'm also very interested in the software development methodology the authors
use. If they're seriously about longevity, they'd be smart to take as few
dependencies on external libraries/systems as possible and use clean, layered
architecture. I'd probably do the lowest levels (the sync and file storage,
etc) in close to pure C and put a graphical front-end on top of it, similar to
what Netflix does with their high-performance media libraries (streaming and
decode) to share code across iOS and Android (via NDK). You want something
super-portable that's easy to slap a new front-end on in 10-15 years when
things have changed, which IMO pretty much rules out any language except C and
maybe Java or .NET.

~~~
twhb
You're not actually disagreeing. Maybe I was unclear. What's superior about
rich text is the _user experience_ \- writing notes, reading notes. I agree
with the issues you list, just don't think they outweigh the benefit.

------
ComodoHacker
Nice app indeed, but... 100+ MB for a notepad? We really, really need a
lighter alternative to Electron.

~~~
rvanmil
Electron is horrible and I hate the fact that it seems to be gaining in
popularity. It's a typical example of developers thinking of themselves first
and their users second. It has come to the point where I am treating Electron
based apps as malware. I won't install them and I will not recommend them to
anyone.

------
greyman
I still use Evernote in Windows. I somehow couldn't bring myself to use those
applications who looks like being optimized for tablet, and then converted to
desktop app. Why is so much margin around each piece of information? Usage of
screen space is very non-efficient.

------
Andi
"... focus on longevity, portability, and privacy." \- "Sign in or register."

That must be a joke.

~~~
godDLL
Actually what that does is create encrypted storage signed with a password of
your choosing on a server of your choosing (can be your own).

------
Eerie
How does it fare, compared to saving cherrytree[1] files in a dropbox folder?
Cherrytree is free, open-source and has more features.

1\. [http://www.giuspen.com/cherrytree/](http://www.giuspen.com/cherrytree/)

------
lhnz
This looks great, but unfortunately unless Apple releases a way of exporting
notes (including images, styling and categories), I will not be able to use
this.

I have hundreds of documents within Apple Notes, and as far as I know there is
no public API to get them out. :(

~~~
kingnight
There is a public API to get them out on the Mac — the Notes app is scriptable
via AppleScript. You could loop through folders, notes, and attachments to get
things pretty close to where they are in the app.

------
sp0ck
Nice app - however Windows version have some issues with local Polish letters.
We use right Alt for that and some letters (ó->alt+o) enable some weird mode.
And I can't find place to change this in app. macOS version works fine.

~~~
mobitar
Thanks for bringing this up, will take a deeper look.

------
cJ0th
I like the idea of this being a non-profit/public benefit corporation.

Personally, I've settled for RedNotebook:
[http://rednotebook.sourceforge.net/](http://rednotebook.sourceforge.net/)

------
creativityland
If anyone is looking for a simple web solution, I found Taskcade
([http://www.taskcade.com](http://www.taskcade.com)) to work quite well for
daily tasks and quick note taking.

------
aryan54
It will be nice to support password/touchID on my phone app for additional
security. I store some of my bank details on my iPhone notes app and really
get worried about losing my phone while it's unlocked.

~~~
mobitar
Good point, will take that into consideration thanks.

------
tomelders
What do you mean when you say "a Markdown supported editor"?

~~~
mobitar
Just that you can toggle between a Markdown preview. I see how it can be
ambiguous. Markdown though is going to be decoupled from the main app and
served as an extension instead.

------
travelton
This is really great! Finally I can dump the Evernote beast. I think the UI
could be polished a bit (collapsable Tags/All Notes section), but other than
that, I'm 99% happy.

------
wj
My primary use case for Evernote is using the web clipper to clip articles and
then tagging and adding notes. Do any the alternatives mentioned in the
comments support that?

------
KZeillmann
Is something like LaTeX possible with extensions? I'm trying to figure out a
way to capture math-related notes (trying to learn more about ML).

~~~
lovelearning
There are multiple ways you can do this already:

\- Typora. Markdown format. Equations rendered on return key.

\- RStudio. Markdown format. However equations don't get rendered immediately.
Requires a knit HTML or PDF action. Still, it's my preferred tool.

\- Jupyter notebook. ipynb format - can be exported to HTML or PDF. Equations
get rendered somewhat immediately (after a shift return keypress).

\- Libreoffice Writer. ODT format, can be exported to HTML or PDF. Uses its
own equation editor (which is quite good if you like GUIs). Rendered
immediately while equation is being typed. Used this for my first ML class -
no trouble at all.

------
newsat13
How about meemo - [https://meemo.minimal-space.de/](https://meemo.minimal-
space.de/)

------
be_erik
With all of these note editing applications I wish I could bring my own
editor. Vim has ruined me and it can be hard to adopt any of these
applications without being able to use vim keybindings.

[https://github.com/xolox/vim-notes](https://github.com/xolox/vim-notes)
mostly fits my needs, but if apps like these came with a pluggable editor
interface than I imagine adoption would be a lot smoother for a certain subset
of users.

~~~
sasvari
if you like vim-notes, you should have a look at vimwiki:

[https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki](https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki)

------
Vaskerville
I don't really have much to add to this discussion, but I absolutely love what
you are doing. Swoon! ;)

~~~
mobitar
Thanks!

------
ilSignorCarlo
I donwloaded the client for Mac and can't find a way to export the notes.

~~~
mobitar
Simply hit Account, then Export Data. (Bottom left corner)

~~~
ilSignorCarlo
so, only if you have an account, I guess

------
dutra
This looks great! I really like the whole idea and you just gained an user.

------
Philomath
Will you post here again when you have the Android app ready?

~~~
mobitar
Yes most likely, as a separate post. Would also recommend to join the Slack
group for early beta/announcement: [https://slackin-
ekhdyygaer.now.sh/](https://slackin-ekhdyygaer.now.sh/)

------
RUG3Y
This is a neat little app, I like the simplicity of it.

------
ladino
Is it possible to use it with owncloud or Nextcloud?

~~~
mobitar
If someone writes an extension for it :)

------
chrismorgan
It supports Markdown. Uh oh. How does it treat security? I hope it at least
_tries_ to block the security hazards of Markdown?

------
v3ss0n
Why not markdown?

------
dingo_bat
Is there an alpha or beta program for the android app?

~~~
mobitar
Not yet, but join the Slack group for early announcements. In development now:
[https://slackin-ekhdyygaer.now.sh/](https://slackin-ekhdyygaer.now.sh/)

~~~
ernestbro
Funny how a Slack group is used for discussions. No offense to the lovely
people at Slack but they fall into the category of "private, short-lived,
growth-oriented companies", no?

This discussion came up here before "Please don't use Slack for FOSS
projects":
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11013136](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11013136)

