Ask HN: How do you electronically store your notes?

Posted by nsomaru on Friday October 04, 2013 @09:01PM
from the ask-hn dept.

Hi HN,

I am about to embark on a project entering text from handwritten class notes into the computer.

The data is structured around verses of scriptural literature which vary in format but generally forming hierarchical structures down to the atomic 'mantra/verse'.

I would like this project to remain flexible but I have a somewhat vision of annotating (and linking, wiki style) text to shown relevance with other sources of culture (like excerpts from a book).

Right now, a focus on data entry is important. What choices can be made now to maintain flexibility later? Latex? XML? SQL database?

( 12 comments | 5 points | on HN )

Re:Ask HN: How do you electronically store your notes? by pasbesoin on Monday October 14, 2013 @01:41PM (#6548557)

If you want to "just start, already" but have an open format, somebody somewhere recently mentioned the locally installed wiki-ish note database and editor Zim. As I recall, they do/did tech support and started using is as a simple, local way to maintain a personal database of references and notes-to-self.

I was curious and put it on one old machine I've been using a fair amount, recently. So far, I like it, although I haven't gone very deep into its features (not that the feature set is necessarily that deep, anyway).

http://zim-wiki.org/

P.S. Just saw your "already invested in Vim" comment reply, so maybe you are looking for something a bit more technical and less "integrated" than this.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: How do you electronically store your notes? by informatimago on Saturday October 05, 2013 @05:04AM (#6500060)

org-mode in emacs. It can do hyperlinks, tables, structure, export to various formats, etc. Its very own little kitchen sink within the kitchen sink :-)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: How do you electronically store your notes? by nsomaru on Saturday October 05, 2013 @07:27AM (#6500357)

Hi,

Thanks for your reply.

I've invested myself in vim as it stands, but will research along the lines of your recommendation.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: How do you electronically store your notes? by Q4273j3b on Saturday October 05, 2013 @11:03AM (#6500847)

Look up evil-mode. It puts vim keybindings into emacs, and it works nicely alongside org-mode. You can edit and navigate vim-style but you still get all the org-mode commands (collapse/uncollapse headers with TAB, put in timestamps with C-u C-c . RETURN, etc.)

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Re:Ask HN: How do you electronically store your notes? by desipenguin on Wednesday October 09, 2013 @02:03PM (#6522762)

Then perhaps VimWiki https://code.google.com/p/vimwiki/

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Re:Ask HN: How do you electronically store your notes? by hashtree on Saturday October 05, 2013 @01:19PM (#6501306)

Private GitHub gists are pretty handy. Version controlled, your choice of language, use them as datastores (write your own client) or something more like markdown interlinked documents, etc...

An actual repo would have even more features, like: https://github.com/blog/1601-see-your-csvs

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Re:Ask HN: How do you electronically store your notes? by nsomaru on Saturday October 05, 2013 @03:07PM (#6501667)

Thanks, this seems like a good integration.

Any suggestions regarding a specific choice of data format? Latex? Markdown? Etc.

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Re:Ask HN: How do you electronically store your notes? by ScottWhigham on Saturday October 05, 2013 @09:15AM (#6500589)

I use a combo of Evernote and OneNote (Windows). I'd think either would be fine in your case. Both have folders/hierarchies that allow for quick nav/search.

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Re:Ask HN: How do you electronically store your notes? by nsomaru on Saturday October 05, 2013 @09:47AM (#6500648)

Hi,

I am running Linux mint at the moment so this is unfortunately not really an option. Besides, these programs don't really lend for data malleability, if you will.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: How do you electronically store your notes? by tectonic on Sunday October 06, 2013 @07:07PM (#6505813)

A gollum wiki. https://github.com/gollum/gollum/wiki

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Re:Ask HN: How do you electronically store your notes? by runjake on Wednesday October 09, 2013 @01:14PM (#6522501)

You're on Linux, so with your given parameters, it sounds like a local install of MediaWiki or similar software would be your best bet.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: How do you electronically store your notes? by braunshizzle on Tuesday October 08, 2013 @11:52PM (#6519296)

I use Trello, great API, free plan, mobile iOS and Android clients that work, multiple users.

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