
Quiver – The Programmer's Notebook - coldtea
http://happenapps.com/
======
roadbeats
Having a personal notebook is a game changer. If you don't have yet, I highly
recommend, tool is not that important...

I just use Emacs and Markdown. It's like my permanent memory, and it's public:
[https://github.com/azer/notebook](https://github.com/azer/notebook)

I even got a pull request once about a note on parenting :) Specifically about
coding, the best thing is, I can quickly open a note within my editor.

For example, I forget some rules about Bash all the time. Instead of Googling
the same thing over and over, I open the bash programming notes with a few key
presses, check the rule, close the note. This happens really fast as I use
Emacs for both coding and taking notes.

~~~
Singletoned
Apart from it being a bunch of Markdown files, what tools do you use with it?

I keep trying org-mode but keep getting annoyed that it isn't Markdown. I'd
love to find a Markdown equivalent.

~~~
hprotagonist
i had the opposite experience; after org, i’m annoyed that markdown doesn’t
support tangling code blocks.

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djhworld
I use Quiver for everything.

However it does have its limits (Mac Only) and development has stalled.

I've tried things like emacs with org-mode in the past but it just didn't
click for me. I like the simplicity of the Quiver format, just JSON blobs with
markdown in them.

For me a notebooking tool needs to have vim keybindings, tagging, searching,
inline image support, syntax highlighting and preferably portability.

These threads seem to pop up every 2 - 3 months, and I'm always intrigued at
what other people are using, but I just haven't seen anything that matches
what Quiver can offer, even if it has some flaws

~~~
davidcollantes
"Updated: Dec 19, 2017" Stalled? Everything has limits, which are the ones you
found? I am not related to the app, nor a user. I am simply curious.

~~~
crispinb
The Dec update was a couple of minor bugfixes. It had been a long time since
the previous update, and there haven’t been new features for ages. It is quite
featureful, so this isn’t egregious, but it is indicative of an app that you’d
have to say is, at best, in caretaker mode now. There are a ton of unaddressed
bugs at
[https://github.com/HappenApps/Quiver/issues](https://github.com/HappenApps/Quiver/issues).

Also the iOS version had been in beta for a long time, and was eventually
released in attenuated form (a free read-only notes viewer).

I’m not writing this to bag the app at all. It’s still my primary note-taking
app. But on present evidence I don’t think anyone would say it has a great
future.

Quiver got a lot right, at least for me, and hit a kind of sweet spot between
the overwhelming closed-platform-centricity of Evernote, and the minimalistic
text-oriented note apps. And it was for the most part nicely implemented -
performant, very mac-idiomatic, and with lots of nice usability touches. I
still have ambitions to build apps based on its notebook files, just because I
want to continue using it for my notes now, but suspect the app itself has a
limited lifespan.

------
yborg
I like Quiver, use it every day, but it's development has kind of
stalled/stopped for a couple of years, and it has some significant
limitations. It's search capability is limited, and it can't do search and
replace. At all. In any form. I had never seen a text handling program that
couldn't replace text, but Quiver now has this distinction. If you need to do
this, you have to open up Quiver's JSON in an actual text editor.

~~~
hatmatrix
Speaking of cell structure, could not Jupyter fill the void? It also works on
cells, accepts Markdown, LaTeX, and code from various languages.

~~~
djhworld
Jupyter doesn't support search as far as I can tell, so you can't tag and
search for notes.

Happy to be proven wrong though

------
tardygrad
I've tried lots of docs tools, but the one I've found works best for me is a
self-hosted Dokuwiki.

Dokuwiki stores it's output in text files (not in a database) so installation
is as simple as unzipping an archive, and a cron job to copy the docs
directory to s3 weekly takes care of backups.

As a plus, you can easily allow collaboration since it is a wiki after all.
Needless to say, you can use it on any platform with a Web browser.

Lack of support for markdown is the only shortcoming, but the wiki syntax is
easy enough to learn.

~~~
diskape
Have you tried installing one of the markdown plugins?

------
inspector14
the quiver dev(s) decided that converting characters/integers to emojis and
adding bizarre hidden characters was a good idea for some reason? i spent an
hour tracking down why the messages i was submitting to a queue weren't
working and it ended up being the fact that i saved it in quiver. try
snippetslab instead.

------
tmikaeld
Too bad it's Mac-only, it would not fly well with collaboration.

Would love to have a similar UI but self-hosted alternative.

------
pyjammas
I bought and used Quiver, but I'm slightly concerned about the lack of
(frequent) updates. With many apps this is not much of a concern for me, but
if I'm going to store much of my data in one, it does matter. As such, I've
been, once again, working on moving away from this app into something more
basic/generic to avoid lock-in.

FWIW, my needs/paranoia might not be relevant to others, and FWIW Quiver is a
nifty app. Still, I do wish I can save others the trouble I went through to
get my stuff into this app and then getting it out of that.

And FWIW, the storage format is quite amenable to export if you're comfortable
with programming, so that's a definite plus for Quiver.

(I had issues with the search functionality, and that was enough for me to
move away)

------
amanzi
Nobody has mentioned Wiki.JS yet, so thought I'd share this:
[https://wiki.js.org/](https://wiki.js.org/). I've just started using it and
am pretty happy with it so far. It reads markdown files from a git repository
every 5 minutes and only adds two comments to the top of each file for
navigation purposes. You can edit files in the editor of your choice and just
git push it back to the origin master, and then Wiki.JS will pick it up within
5 minutes. Or you can edit files directly in the browser through the Wiki.JS
interface - and this has full access control mechanisms in place to secure
content. Very cool.

------
codingWithGit
I use zim-wiki. [http://zim-wiki.org/](http://zim-wiki.org/) It's open source
and uses a text based file format.

------
trengrj
I use Typora [https://typora.io/](https://typora.io/) which has most of the
functionality including Markdown, Code blocks with syntax highlighting, LateX
segments, and is more importantly free and cross platform.

It has recently added file list preview and tree view like functionality. Only
missing on tags which are tricky because they break its pure markdown flat
file philosophy.

~~~
mosselman
"* Only free during beta."

~~~
yitchelle
If the tools provides good value, charging for it should be OK as long as it
is reasonable. The caveat I place is that the data should not held hostage.

~~~
mosselman
Of course, I just cited that because @trengrj said:

"..., and is more importantly free and cross platform."

------
izacus
Since Quiver is only usable on Apple platforms, I've instead started using
Boostnote. It doesn't quite have the same featureset, but it's still a great
way of collecting formatted notes and storing them on Dropbox/GDrive.

~~~
staz
I've glossed over their website and can't figure out if it's opensource or not

~~~
izacus
GitHub:
[https://github.com/BoostIO/Boostnote](https://github.com/BoostIO/Boostnote)

------
altharaz
I use Quiver every day. I really like the way I can organize my notes and
projects. However the main issue I have with this software is the absence of
synchronisation between devices: I can’t browse on my iPhone what I wrote on
my Mac.

~~~
inopinatus
I have the Quiver app loading my library from Dropbox and therefore have just
read on my iPhone what I wrote on my Mac.

------
kalessin
I use MoinMoin for that ([https://moinmo.in/](https://moinmo.in/)) it's pretty
awesome (and portable).

Right now I just run the whole thing out of a Mercurial repo (it's easy to use
the MoinMoin codebase as a sub-repo [1]), but I'm planning to do a setup with
a container so that the data can directly live in any (Dropbox) folder or
repo.

[1]
[https://moinmo.in/HowTo/Run%20Moin%20from%20a%20Mercurial%20...](https://moinmo.in/HowTo/Run%20Moin%20from%20a%20Mercurial%20work%20directory)

------
mayankkaizen
Seems interesting and something I need. But it is available only for Mac?

~~~
guessmyname
> _Seems interesting and something I need. But it is available only for Mac?_

Yes, which is ironic because the app is packaged using Electron, which is
supposed to be cross-platform.

The developers should have developed this app using native libraries instead
to offer a good performance.

~~~
reificator
> _the app is packaged using Electron_

Native developers just can't win anymore. Here someone wrote a native
application for macOS using native widgets and getting native performance, and
all Hacker News can do is complain that it's Electron-based when it's not.

Seriously, if we're at the point where you just can't tell if it's native or
Electron, I think it's time for the anti-Electron brigade to come to an end.

~~~
crispinb
Not part of the anti-Electron brigade (native is, ceteris paribus, superior,
but at a cost that can't always be justified), but

> if we're at the point where you just can't tell if it's native or Electron

We're really not. I don't know where the parent here got this daft idea, but
you can be sure it wasn't from actually trying Quiver. It's gobsmackingly
obvious that it's a true Cocoa app.

------
mosselman
I will try to explain why I don't want to pay for note taking apps. Just an
insight, I am probably wrong. Why ramble on like this? Maybe there is someone
who can point me to a nice app that I can use.

The problem with most these apps is that I can't just point at a directory
where the app should organise my files. I am not looking for something that
saves my files to some strange (proprietary) format in an invisible place
(some OS's app-data directories/online service). Putting files in folders is a
problem that has been solved, it is called a file-system and all OS-s have it.

I want to work with a directory of markdown files like so:

\- Easy to use on all my devices \- Copy-paste images directly (biggest
feature over a code-editor) \- Proper code-highlighting and Markdown support
support and generally easy to look at and use \- Use normal directory
structure for organisation \- Sync using my normal tools (iCloud, Dropbox,
etc), hence pointing at a dir \- Search based on tags of some sort would be
ok, but can't really see the use over directory structure

Apparently the top 2 requirements won out. I say 'apparently' as I ended up
using Apple Notes for note taking as it is the easiest to use on all my
devices and it does image copy-pasting very well. The only down-side is that
there is no directory to point to at and it lacks proper support for code.

In reality I don't really feel the need to take code notes enough. I just put
stuff in the `README.md` of a project that I needed the snippet for in the
first place.

So I already have most of the features that I find relevant from a free part
of my computer OS and phone OS (Apple Notes). Notes works very well, there is
sync, pasting images works like a charm and when I really need a small code-
snippet I can live with plain-text in monospace without code highlighting.
Therefore I don't want to pay $1.5 (Bear) or any other amount of money per
month.

I would pay a set price though for working with MY directories, but not ~$40
(Ulysses), rather than a monthly fee.

Especially pasting images from my clipboard is a must have feature for me. I'd
also want to be able to work seamlessly from computer to phone to computer,
etc. The last requirement being why just using Atom with git is not a good
fit.

~~~
dustinblake
You might find one of the Notational Velocity forks to be exactly what you're
looking for:

[http://notational.net](http://notational.net)

[http://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/](http://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/)

(nvALT adds Markdown support and a few interface adjustments)

Point whichever NV you use to a directory of txt or markdown files in your
Dropbox. NV is nimble and lightning quick, and it excels at super-fast search.
Don't even bother with tags, just search.

------
hliyan
Wouldn't a customizable version of [http://devdocs.io/](http://devdocs.io/)
have been a better sell?

~~~
codetrotter
Speaking of which, imagine combining that with a search tool that could also
see what windows you had open and which one was in focus and the search tool
could ask your text editors and IDEs to tell it what language was in use at
the current cursor position and use that for filtering results.

So I press meta + space on my keyboard and a search box overlay pops up on my
desktop.

The search box talks to my text editor and IDE windows and learns that
currently I have an IDE open with Python 3 code in focus and aditonally I have
two HTML files and three JavaScript files open.

I type _date_.

First result is Python 3 date module documentation from the official Python 3
docs of which I have a local copy.

Second result is HTML5 date element documentation from MDN of which I have a
local copy.

Third result is JS Date object documentation from MDN of which I have a local
copy.

Furthermore there are results of local copies of Stack Overflow questions
about Python 3, HTML5 or JS that talk about “date”.

That’d be quite nice.

------
wernsey
I would love something like this to replace Evernote, but being able to
synchronize my notes between work and home is what keeps me locked in.

Also, can one of these apps add the ability to cross-reference notes? I used
Wiki On A Stick back in the day and being able to cross reference notes was a
killer feature for me.

I stopped using it because of all the hoops you have to jump through to get it
working on modern browsers.

------
halvdan
Looks neat!

I've been using Vim and Vimwiki
[https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki](https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki) to
scratch a similar itch. I wish I was more consistent in using it though.

Vimwiki in a repository makes it easy to share between workstations (and
different platforms).

------
mavus
I've only recently started using it but if you're looking for something
similar but cross platform and open source I recommend:
[https://boostnote.io](https://boostnote.io)

All the core features you would needs from a notes app for developers. It even
has iOS/Android apps.

~~~
alunchbox
Did a quick google search to see if there was anything similar to Quiver that
is open source and you beat me to it on posting it :D. How's the experience
been using boostnote?

------
c17r
If you are looking for native yet cross platform note taking, take a look at
[https://scribbleton.com/](https://scribbleton.com/).

No association with it, just happy user.

------
CodeArtisan
i am using org-wiki on emacs. Quiver looks comfy but mac only.
[https://caiorss.github.io/org-wiki/](https://caiorss.github.io/org-wiki/)

------
fluder
I am use FSNotes, it’s free and with iOS client in beta.
[https://github.com/glushchenko/fsnotes](https://github.com/glushchenko/fsnotes)

------
randomerr
Is this an Electron app? If so, can it be ported to Windows and Linux?

~~~
crispinb
No. It has a simple & documented file format
([https://github.com/HappenApps/Quiver/wiki/Quiver-Data-
Format](https://github.com/HappenApps/Quiver/wiki/Quiver-Data-Format)) so an
equivalent could be built, but it's very much a Cocoa app so a port wouldn't
be very feasible.

------
maxthegeek1
Wow this looks great!

