I'm thinking unpopular could mean the tech is polarizing or frequently dismissed/overlooked.
* APL -- I haven't dedicated the time to learning in part because there's little support where I normally work. I'd love for APL to have be adapted like a domain specific language a la perl compatible regular expressions for various languages (april in common lisp, APL.jl in julia).
* regular expressions. https://xkcd.com/1171/
* bugs/issue tracking embedded in git https://github.com/MichaelMure/git-bug/
But I'm more excited for things that fall into the niche/lesser-known side of of unpopular. I love finding the little gems that change how I organize or work with the system.
* "type efficiently by saying syllables and literal words" https://sr.ht/~geb/numen/
* I use fasd[0] 'z' alias for jumping to previous directories in shell every day.
* Alt+. in shell (readline, bash) to get the previous commands last argument is another ergonomic time saver that I think is relatively obscure. I have a bash wrapper to combine that with fzf for quick any-previous-command-argument fuzzy search and insert [1]
* zimwiki [2] (and/or a less capable emacs mode[3]) for note taking has served me well for a decade+
* DokuWiki's XML RPC [4] enables local editor edits to a web wiki. I wish it was picked up by more editor plugin developers. (cf. emacs-dokiwki [5])
* xterm isn't unpopular per say, but I don't see sixel support and title setting escape codes talked about often. I depend on a bash debug trap to update the prompt with escape codes that set the terminal title [6]
Greenclip is exactly what I've been looking for! Thanks!
Also how do you use zimwiki? I've been trying it for a month and I don't find it that great compared to something like Obsidian or QOwnNotes or even TiddlyWiki. Do you have a specific workflow?
Yeah! On the actual notetaking side: I think I stumbled into a less deliberate "interstitial journaling" paradigm (a la roam research?). I setup the journal plugin to create a file per week from there keep a list of links to project specific files (hierarchies like :tools:autossh, :studies:R01grant:datashare). I also backlink from the project file to the journal file. So each page looks like a log. I try to aggressively interlink related topics/files.
I have an ugly and now likely outdated plugin for Zim to help with this. There's a small chance the demo screenshots for it help tie together what I'm trying to say. https://github.com/WillForan/zim-plugin-datelinker
On the tech side:
My work notes (and email) has shifted into emacs but I'm still editing zimwiki formatted files w/ the many years of notes accumulated in it Though I've lost it moving to emacs, the Zim GUI has a nice backlink sidebar that's amazing for rediscovery. Zim also facilitates hierarchy (file and folder) renames which helps take the pressure off creating new files. I didn't make good use of the map plugin, but it's occasionally useful to see the graph of connected pages.
I'm (possibly unreasonably) frustrated with using the browser for editing text. Page loads and latency are noticeably, editor customization is limited, and shortcuts aren't what I've muscle memory for -- accidental ctrl-w (vim:swap focus, emacs/readline delete word) is devastating.
Zim and/or emacs is super speedy. Especially with local files. I using syncthing to get keep computers and phone synced. But, if starting fresh, I might look at things that using markdown or org-mode formatting instead. logseq (https://logseq.com/) looks pretty interesting there.
Thank you for the long answer! You've made some really great points, and regarding markdown and org-mode I've been thinking about switching to something like djot instead (from the author of pandoc) but I can't deny the power of emacs and org-mode when combined.
Also your "interstitial journaling" paradigm seems great, I'll try to apply it because I enjoy grounding what I do into some loose chronology kinda.
Thanks again for taking the time to expound on your approach!
[0] https://github.com/clvv/fasd [1] https://github.com/WillForan/fuzzy_arg [2] https://zim-wiki.org/ [3] https://github.com/WillForan/zim-wiki-mode [4] https://www.dokuwiki.org/xmlrpc [5] https://github.com/flexibeast/emacs-dokuwiki [6] https://github.com/WillForan/dotconf/blob/master/bash/PS1.ba... -- bash debug trap to update prompt with escape codes that set the title to previous run command -- to eg. search windows for the terminal playing music from 'mpv'