
Show HN: Collate: Cross platform note taking app based on plain text data format - patleeman
http://collatenotes.com/welcome/
======
WhitneyLand
_" Sign up for our newsletter below to get a download link [to our beta]"_

No thanks, but I'd be glad to try it and give constructive feedback if you can
provide a link without the e-mail requirement.

I like to think of us as a like minded community trying to help each other
rather than worrying about harvesting e-mail during a beta cycle. Why not make
it optional until you are v1.0?

That said, it looks like you've done some nice work.

Do you have mobile apps in progress?

~~~
patleeman
Honestly, before this post went live I had no idea if anybody would be
interested in yet another note taking application. I was hoping to use it as a
way to gauge if people would consider giving me their email address in
exchange for trying the beta. I completely understand where you're coming from
though, I myself try to keep my inbox clean!

To skip the mail signup, you can jump straight to the download link here:

[https://goo.gl/8ZBHQx](https://goo.gl/8ZBHQx)

Thanks for the kind words!

No mobile apps yet. I know, this is a huge sore point for myself as well. It's
definitely on the road map and I'd like to get the desktop app stable and some
more features ironed out before I dive into the mobile app realm.

~~~
bachmeier
> I had no idea if anybody would be interested in yet another note taking
> application

I'm coming to the conclusion that the answer to this is always yes. I wonder
if the correct answer is for everyone to have their own note taking app.
There's a balance between using an existing tool and having one that does what
you want.

I was also surprised by the email signup to try a beta. That made me think I'd
have to buy a paid app in a few months. (Not that there's anything wrong with
paid apps, but I'm not a fan of trial versions of software.)

------
nitemice
I've been wanting to create a file format like this for so long. Good job!

The main thing I was thinking of doing differently was zipping the whole thing
up, so that it would become a single file that you could pass around, similar
in concept to a CBZ.

Edit: Haven't really looked too much at the software, just really excited
about the notebook format.

~~~
patleeman
Thanks! It's really good to hear that other people wanted something similar!

Zipping is a great idea, I didn't even consider that. I'll definitely look
into it.

I've mainly been considering trying to integrate Git into the application for
both version control and the remote features. It would auto add, commit, push
and pull from remote and allow people to use a git repo they host or an
already available service like github or gitlab. It would try to be as
seamless and out of the way as possible.

It would be quite a bit of work and I'm interested on hearing what others have
to say before I dive into that rabbit hole.

~~~
shakna
I'm not sure what backend you're using, but you might find it simpler to
integrate Mercurial, as you can basically access it as a Python library [0].

Though, Mercurial doesn't have a particularly great git-export story, so
syncing to GitHub or the like is harder. (Fossil has a better story there,
with first-class git export, but a different workflow, and harder integration
story (a RESTful JSON API)).

Git tends to be harder to integrate with, as there is sort of an expectation
you'll maintain a shell process for it. [1]

As to zipping, with Git, you need to zip the whole repo.

Fossil can zip files upon storage, or you can zip the *.fossil file.

Mercurial can bundle with gzip, to simplify things a bit.

My point being, though git can give you some nice places for users to deploy
to, it can be a bit of a pain to work with, and a couple other SCM systems
might need to be considered. They might make your life a lot easier.

[0] [https://www.mercurial-scm.org/wiki/MercurialApi](https://www.mercurial-
scm.org/wiki/MercurialApi)

[1] [https://git-scm.com/book/be/v2/Embedding-Git-in-your-
Applica...](https://git-scm.com/book/be/v2/Embedding-Git-in-your-Applications-
Command-line-Git)

~~~
patleeman
Hey thanks for the thoughtful answers! The back end is written with Electron,
so I have access to plenty of libs on NPM. I was thinking of utilizing libgit2
with some popular thin wrapper out there and giving it a shot and testing it.
If it doesn't work out, I'll check out the other SCM systems as well.

Git is appealing to me personally because it's just so ubiquitous and there
are plenty of free services out there to use.

------
thenomad
How's its image handling? If it's just "write Markdown to display the image",
that doesn't work so well for me - can't view offline, lose context if the
image disappears from the Web, etc.

~~~
patleeman
Currently you can attach images to notes but I really want to add a way to
attach an image and have it download and save to the attachments folder. Then
have an insert button available.

So one would download an image, attach it to the note, and then they could
right click on the attachment and click insert into body or something like
that.

Another idea was to create a web clipper 'note type' and expand past just
simple markdown notes. Note types would be for example, a web clipper note
type which would download a webpage for offline consumption as a note. Or a
list note type which has check boxes, list items, etc. One could potentially
be a gallery or image note type for attaching and viewing image.

I'm still thinking through the idea and implementation but it's one of the
features I'd really like to implement. I think it would make note taking way
more flexible than just markdown.

~~~
hunvreus
Maybe embed images as base64 blobs?

~~~
patleeman
Yes! It would be cool to compile all assets into a single html file and store
that.

------
fmos
Have you considered Zim ([http://zim-wiki.org](http://zim-wiki.org))? It seems
to check all of your points. I'm using it heavily for all kind of notes that
exceed two lines. It has some amazing plugins too (e.g. For organizing Todo
items across the entire notebook).

~~~
hypercluster
Not OP but I've looked into Zim and other Wikis several times but I can't find
a good editor for mobile (iOS).

------
cbenz
I use [http://workflowy.com/](http://workflowy.com/)

In short it's a tree with potentially infinite depth, search, tags (#work) and
contacts (@mummy), and the ability to change the root of the tree.

It's also possible to share nodes in read or read/write with other users. It's
exportable to Markdown and other formats.

Sadly Collate notes nor Workflowy are free software (as in libre), and I
cannot install them on my server :-(

~~~
NickBusey
Shameless plug: I am currently working on a free (as in libre) Workflowy
replacement.
[https://github.com/NickBusey/BulletNotes](https://github.com/NickBusey/BulletNotes)

~~~
zaphods-towel
Awesome, thanks for sharing!

------
pka
(Shameless plug)

Couple of years ago I made Atea [0], a text-based note taking/TODO/time
tracking app for MacOS. Since it stores everything in plain text files,
synchronisation can be offloaded to Dropbox etc.

There's no sorting, attachments end everything else Collate offers, but I
still use if for tracking time and managing projects.

[0] [https://github.com/pkamenarsky/atea](https://github.com/pkamenarsky/atea)

~~~
zaphods-towel
Hi, thanks for your work on this, it looks awesome! I tried to download the
precompiled dmg and it appears to be broken. When I try to open it, my
computer says the file is damaged and needs to be deleted. I'm not
knowledgeable enough to compile it myself and would absolutely love an easy-
to-set-up dmg download I could use. I'm running Mac OS 10.11.4 if that makes a
difference.

Thanks!

------
axx
I found "Standard Notes" a few days ago, could be of interest for people
who're looking for apps like this:
[https://standardnotes.org](https://standardnotes.org)

~~~
jclos
I was recently looking for something to replace my Evernote, and this was the
list of things I have found during my search:

\- Any text editor + Syncthing
[https://syncthing.net/](https://syncthing.net/) \+ TagSpaces
[https://www.tagspaces.org/](https://www.tagspaces.org/)

\- QOwnNotes [http://www.qownnotes.org/](http://www.qownnotes.org/)

\- Nimbus Notes
[https://nimbus.everhelper.me/note.php](https://nimbus.everhelper.me/note.php)

\- Laverna [https://laverna.cc/](https://laverna.cc/)

\- Turtl [https://turtlapp.com/](https://turtlapp.com/)

\- SimpleNote [https://simplenote.com/](https://simplenote.com/)

\- Wiz [http://www.wiz.cn/](http://www.wiz.cn/)

\- Google Keep [https://keep.google.com](https://keep.google.com)

\- Microsoft OneNote [https://www.onenote.com/](https://www.onenote.com/)

\- Quiver [http://happenapps.com/#quiver](http://happenapps.com/#quiver)

\- Notation [http://getnotation.com/](http://getnotation.com/)

\- FetchNotes [http://www.fetchnotes.com/#/](http://www.fetchnotes.com/#/)

\- ResophNotes
[http://www.resoph.com/ResophNotes/Welcome.html](http://www.resoph.com/ResophNotes/Welcome.html)

\- ConnectedText
[http://www.connectedtext.com/](http://www.connectedtext.com/)

\- RedNotebook
[http://rednotebook.sourceforge.net/](http://rednotebook.sourceforge.net/)

\- Notebooks [http://www.notebooksapp.com/](http://www.notebooksapp.com/)

\- KeepNote [http://keepnote.org/](http://keepnote.org/)

\- CintaNotes [http://cintanotes.com/](http://cintanotes.com/)

\- Paperwork
[https://github.com/twostairs/paperwork](https://github.com/twostairs/paperwork)

\- MemPad [http://www.horstmuc.de/wmem.htm](http://www.horstmuc.de/wmem.htm)

\- Zim [http://zim-wiki.org/](http://zim-wiki.org/)

\- StandardNotes [https://standardnotes.org/](https://standardnotes.org/)

Collate seems to hit all the right notes though, so I'll probably switch to
that.

~~~
hornbaker
I went with one not on your list - nvALT, backed by an encrypted Dropbox
store. Love the minimal UI.

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

~~~
jclos
I actually saw it but forgot to add it to the list. To be honest nvAlt and
Quiver are my two favorite and make me sad that I am on Windows and can't use
them. They really don't have any good equivalent on other OS.

------
lcall
For anyone looking, another note-taking app is
[http://onemodel.org](http://onemodel.org). (I'm the author).

It starts from a different conception of the nature of atomic knowledge.
Details at the web site. Text-only, no mobile support (yet?), bit of a pain to
install, but the most efficient I've ever known of and easy to use (I hope).
Uses postgresql as the back end. I'd consider hosting the db for users, with
discussion.

------
avinassh
How are conflicts handled?

Let's say I have two devices; both are offline. Now when I make changes to the
same file on both devices, what happens when both devices come online? I guess
there will be data loss?

~~~
patleeman
Currently the user is the one to handle syncing. If you use a service like
Dropbox or Google Drive, the sync will be handled however they handle it.

In the future, I'd like to integrate git into the application and have a
simplified conflict resolution where a a diff would be shown and you're given
a accept this version or this other version.

------
jasonlfunk
Is this more than a markdown editor with a file explorer built in?

~~~
patleeman
Yes, it pretty much is!

It's built off the [Collate data
format]([https://github.com/Collateapp/collate-file-
format](https://github.com/Collateapp/collate-file-format)) which is just
plaintext markdown files with YAML encoded metadata. One of the underlying
principals of Collate is that you _should_ be able to traverse your notes in a
file browser and edit them in a text editor manually if for whatever reason
Collate doesn't work for you. The current iteration of Collate is exactly
that, and I'm looking to build on top of that going forward!

~~~
jamessb
I see that you allow the inclusion of arbitrary keys, but don't currently do
anything with them.

I currently keep notes as Markdown files, with similar key/value pairs at the
start of each. I then have a hacky script [1] that extracts all such data from
each note with a particular tag, and prints the results as a table. So I have
automatically generated tables for my notes on talks (with columns for the
date, venue, speaker's name, and talk series), books (title, author,
publisher), recipes (title, course, source, whether I've cooked it), etc.
without needing any special configuration.

If I were to use Collate, I'd keep notes on talks/books/recipes in separate
notebooks, so it would be a useful feature to display a table of all key/value
pairs in a particular notebook.

[1]: [https://github.com/jamesscottbrown/nvalt-
scripts](https://github.com/jamesscottbrown/nvalt-scripts)

------
blunte
Until there is a web clipper that can do as well as Evernote, it's not an
option for me. These days, I clip as much useful content as I write my own
notes.

~~~
jclos
If you're ok with Google storing your stuff, I have recently switched from
Evernote to simply using the Save to Google Drive chrome extension, and it's
very good. It doesn't do the whole "remove the fluff" thing but it has the
option of storing an image (PNG) of the page, or the html, or a web archive
(html + resources) straight into a folder of your google drive. It's not
complete, but it's a potential replacement.

~~~
blunte
Thanks for this. Most of what I web-clip are just tech how-tos that
occasionally vanish from the web, making bookmarks useless.

------
mickael-kerjean
Did you consider emacs with org-mode?

It fits all your points but come with agendas, tags, can export into a crazy
amount of format and a whole bunch of useful things I use on a daily basis.
It's already cross platform (without relying on electron), lightweight and can
even work without any Gui installed

~~~
patleeman
Yes! I've heard such good things about org-mode but I just couldn't get over
the learning curve for emacs. I'm more comfortable with Vim and even tried the
vim-orgmode but i just couldn't get into it. I really do need to hop in and
try it again one day!

~~~
endisukaj
You can give Spacemacs or emacs+EVIL mode a try. It's basically emacs+vi
keybindings.

------
mattcoles
Is it just me or is the site hijacking scroll? I can't tell if I'm going mad
or not.

~~~
lewiseason
It 100% is, you're probably not going mad.

------
guilhas
How does it compare with floss [https://leanote.com/](https://leanote.com/) ?

