Next question: *tagged* note taker?
I want to thank everyone for all the suggestions in
this thread regarding tabbed text editors.
Unfortunately, nothing is exactly *IT* - but I’ve been using
TextWrangler over the weekend and I think it will end up in
my arsenal anyway, even though it’s not technically everything I’m looking for. The drop-down menu for accessing files
instead of tabs is a close second. Plus, you can’t beat free. :)
But I have yet another question for your collective knowledge wisdom. The fatal flaw with keeping text files of notes
is that, once you close them, you can’t search them. I know that
Spotlight will address this, but gol-darnit, I hate
waiting. On the other hand, the fatal flaw with knowledge collectors like DevonThink and StickyBrain is that they keep
your files in proprietary databases that you have to remember to backup and/or export periodically. Try as I might, I
can never seem to ‘remember’ to do these sorts of periodic actions.
So my new question is two-fold: are there any note collector/research-oriented apps that collect and store files in
standard formats, yet keep them always searchable? Part two is: are there any note-taking apps that allow you to
organize your notes by tagging them instead of by placing them in hierarchies? By tagging I mean an easy way to attach
any number of non-hierarchical attributes to a note, the way that Flickr and
del.icio.us allow you to do. If something like this exists for OS X, I would probably
switch to it in a heartbeat.
Again, thanks in advance for any suggestions!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
gabe ck said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
You may want to have a look at Eastgate's Tinderbox. http://eastgate.com/Tinderbox. I have no connection to Eastgate other than being a satisfied customer while I had a Mac.
With that out of the way, I should point out that Tinderbox stores all data in a relatively easy to understand XML format that is easily translated for other applications. In addition, it allows you to add arbitrary numbers and types of attributes to each "note" and then to search based on your tags or etc.
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dave said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
Not sure if *free* is a requirement and i didn't go through the responses to your original thread so forgive me if this is a repeat.
I was looking for a lot of similar options you are and settled on the new StickyBrain 3: http://www.chronosnet.com/Products/sb_product.html Purchased a license and haven't looked back. It's a tabbed note viewer/editor, ALL notes are searchable from within the app AND from an optional menu bar icon, even if the app isn't running! Highly customizable, configurable, stylable. Address Book integration and contact *linking,* very easy to email a note straight from the app. The only thing I think it *might* be lacking is your tagging option, although it's PAINfully easy to set up new folders and organize them that way, (think: Mail's UI) which might be a better categorizing/organizing method than tagging depending on your needs. Feel free to email me if you have Q's.
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dave said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
Oh yea, two more really handy StickyBrain 3 features: you can assign clipping services to any note or folder, invoked by a user-definable shortcut keys or a system wide context click service. There's also a QuickNote feature, kinda the same idea: strike a user-definable shortcut and a new note window pops up. Do what you need to do and it's filed away in a defined category. Both of these features work w/out the app running, and its service that runs in the background for these features to operate seems well written and efficient; not crunching more cpu than it should.
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barb dybwad said 4:41PM on 10-07-2005
Gabe - have looked at Tinderbox in the past and, because I didn't immediately 'grok it' and didn't have time to delve, it never caught on with me. Maybe I'll have to give it another look with some patience, but there's a catch-22 always with these things - how much time am I willing to invest merely to discover if a product is the right tool for me? I don't have a lot - well, any, really - 'free time' to speak of so it's a fine line.
Dave - I wanted to love SB3 - I really did. I used SB2 until I couldn't stand looking at that ugly sticky-note UI anymore and gave it up. When I saw the announcement for SB3 I ran out and downloaded it and fell in love... until I started wanting to shoot myself in the head while waiting wayyyyy too long for it to do simple things like create new folders.
I see SB3.3 is out - are there speed improvements? If so, I'll give it another look. Otherwise... I'd prefer not to resort to shooting myself in the head. ;)
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dave said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
Yea there have been serious speed improvements in 3.2 and 3.3. Version 3.2 brought .Mac backup/syncing, and 3.3 brought the QuickNote feature I mentioned.
I'm working on a 17" 1.5 Ghz powerbook and it creates new folders in the blink of an eye. Maybe something's wrong with your install or something funny is running in the bkg?
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dave said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
Yea there have been serious speed improvements in 3.2 and 3.3. Version 3.2 brought .Mac backup/syncing, and 3.3 brought the QuickNote feature I mentioned.
I'm working on a 17" 1.5 Ghz powerbook and it creates new folders in the blink of an eye. Maybe something's wrong with your install or something funny is running in the bkg?
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David said 1:50PM on 10-06-2005
> On the other hand, the fatal flaw with knowledge
> collectors like DevonThink and StickyBrain is that they
> keep your files in proprietary databases that you have
> to remember to backup and/or export periodically. Try
> as I might, I can never seem to remember to do these
> sorts of periodic actions.
(NOTE: I haven't used either app)
Are they AppleScript friendly? If so it'd probably take about 30 minutes of minor hacking to make a script that will export/backup/whatever you need.
Once you've done that, go hack up /etc/crontab so that your Mac will remember to backup your data and you won't have to.
To get a backup every Friday (say) you'd need to add a line like this to /etc/crontab:
0 0 * * Fri root osascript < path to your script >
Just my $0.02
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Michele said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
While it doesn't explictily support tagging, I do quite well with Notational Velocity http://pubweb.nwu.edu/~zps869/nv.html it's tiny, fast and to the point: just store and search text in there, with appropriate keyboard shortcuts.
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Paul Turnbull said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
I use DevonThink despite it's storage method because now that I have a couple of thousand documents it handles the categorization for me. It's not exactly tagging but you can group a single document in DT into multiple groups.
While I use DT for storage of articles and other third-party material I use Tinderbox for my own writing. I've set up a Category attribute that use for tagging. I just comma-delimit the tags.
If you want a DT style app that stores everything accessibly you could look at Hog Bay Notebook. It stores notes as RTFs inside a bundle.
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Scott Ahten said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
I recommend Tinderbox as well. It can seem strange at first, but once you "get it" you'll find it really handy for taking notes, etc. And you can search though things quickly. You can also create "agents" that can scan though your notes and build meta notes or lists automatically.
Things get really interesting when you take the time to play around with it's export features. You can create something simple like a web page or something as complex as an entire weblog, including links, navigation, archives, etc.
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Andy Fragen said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
If you can't wait for Spotlight you might want to look at KIT.
http://www.reinventedsoftware.com/kit/index.html
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Steve said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
If you have FileMaker Pro, you can set up a database for your notes.
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Mark Mayo said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
VoodooPad probably fits the bill. It lets you build your own little wikis and link pages together. And it's searchable. And they make it easy to dump your data out into a bunch of formats for safe keeping. Creating linked pages is effortless. I just love it to bits.
http://flyingmeat.com/voodoopad.html
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Erik Weibust said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
How about you use any app you want for writing your notes. Then if you're comfortable using the cmd-line you use a simple alias like:
$ alias SearchTextFiles='find ~/Documents -name "*.txt" -print | xargs grep '
Once you have the alias just give it the string you want to search for. I love searching from the cmd-line. My take is it's much more powerful.
$ SearchTextFiles junk
./file1.txt:this is some junk.
./file2.txt:junk, junk, junk.
You get the point.
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barb dybwad said 4:41PM on 10-07-2005
@#10: Andy, KIT is awesome, awesome, awesome. I can't believe I never ran across it before. I can use the comments section to essentially do tagging, and the smart groups function... oh, I am in heaven! It lacks one feature I realize is becoming increasingly essential: not just search, but *browse* by tags. But it's close enough. I'm totally using it.
@#11: No offense, but I have no love for Filemaker. If I'm going to build my own database for this, I may as well do it online with PHP/mySQL. Which I started doing a while ago, had to abandon for lack of time, and may pick up again.
@#12: I love VoodooPad too and recommended it here for Freeware February. But yet, the problem with this and the series of online wikis I've had is that they don't scale well, and once the dataset becomes very large (which doesn't take long), I find it difficult to refactor... and boring to refactor. This isn't neccessarily particular to wikis - I find almost everything very difficult in the refactoring department, but still.
@#13: Erik, I just last night accidentally stumbled on a piece of software from the makers of DevonThink that basically does this and more via a GUI: EasyFind. It's free, so it will most definitely be covered soon enough for Freeware Feb! :)
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jeeves said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
no one's mentioned using quicksilver for document searching/indexing
else voodoo pad and notational velocity look like your best picks
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