[TeMPOraL]

No note-taking thread could be complete without someone mentioning Emacs and org-mode, so let's be done with this already.

Comparing this app to Emacs/org-mode, I'd say that the core benefit of this app is collaboration. For single-person use, org-mode blows everything out of the water, being faster to use, much more feature-packed, and having better integration with programming languages (e.g. allowing to run code straight from your notes, in any language you've already set your Emacs up to work with, and have such random blocks of code in the notes exchange data). But there's no proper way of collaborating with this setup - both because lack of structure (org-mode notes are just plaintext files), and the near-impossibility to convince your co-workers to use Emacs if they aren't already.

Still, don't treat it as a negative comment, Emacs users are set for life and aren't really your target audience :). If anything, take a look at org-mode and see if you can steal some ideas.

[matt-snider]

I use vimwiki, and I'm really liking the simplicity of plain text notes (markdown in my case). I've never used orgmode, but I prefer to use other tools for to-dos and calendar/organization anyways. From reading about it, I think the only feature I'd really like to have is literate programming, which looks cool. Also, the tag search appears to support expressions, which vimwiki doesn't.

One area that I'm struggling with is making my notes easily viewable, editable and searchable on mobile. Syncthing + Markor for editing takes care of the editable part, but they aren't displayed nicely or easily searchable by text or tags. Exporting to HTML would make them nicer to read, but still not searchable. App and browser based solutions are much nicer in this regard, but I'm not willing to compromise on the other great benefits of programs like vimwiki/orgmode.

If you or anyone else has experience or an opinion, I'd be glad to hear about it.

[mickael-kerjean]

> I'm not willing to compromise on the other great benefits of programs like vimwiki/orgmode.

Orgmode has some very decent web client: https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/nuage/wiki/Release-0.1:-O...)

disclaimer: I'm the author

[patrickdavey]

I made a little gem called vimwiki_ markdown which would help with the HTML part.

https://github.com/patrickdavey/vimwiki_markdown

[matt-snider]

I actually am already using vim_markdown - thanks! It works well in terms of rendering, but I still have no ability to search, which I guess isn't the responsibility of vimwiki/vimwiki_markdown, but might need to be some postprocessing step.

[confounded]

The plaintext editor in NextCloud for iOS is basic, but works quite well for me.

[lilseb]

On Android I use an App called Epsilon Notes synced to my vimwiki via syncthing. It handles md files like vimwiki.

[matt-snider]

Thanks, I'll check it out!

EDIT: it's a great app! Supports search and preview mode, links work properly too. It's just unfortunate that it's not open-source, which I find pretty important for some of the sensitive information that might be in a personal wiki.

[tbrock]

How does vim-notes compare?

[farcat991]

You can't add pictures and other media items in an org-mode document. You also cannot use a stylus and record notes in free hand in org-mode.

[TeMPOraL]

Don't know about stylus and haven't heard about sound recording for Emacs (never searched, but if there's none, then I'm sure this oversight will soon be corrected) - but for media files in general, org-mode allows you to manage "attachments" to textual notes. It works by making a copy of the attached file and storing it in a special directory structure next to the note, and then storing a UUID + list of file names in the note itself. This is probably the only reasonable way to associate extra binary files with a note that needs to remain plaintext and human-readable. Such attachments are then 3-4 keystrokes away from being perused in whatever program you usually open a given data type with.

(Of course if you manage such media manually and don't need a copy stored with note, you can use regular org-mode links to point to files, both local and remote.)

You're probably thinking about displaying media inline, and I agree this doesn't have a good implementation. I'm not aware of support for anything other than inline images, and even with pictures it's pretty rough at the edges. While it works for plots & figures (especially ones you generate straight from your notes, i.e. Jupyter-style workflow), I still haven't figured how to set up some scaling for those images. Also last time I checked, displaying larger images inline gave a somewhat choppy experience.

Overall it's not a big problem, but it does change the way you make notes. The king of "multimedia notetaking" is still Microsoft's OneNote, and long ago when I was using it, my notes would have a lot of pictures and screenshots mixed with text. In org mode, I naturally avoid having to make such notes; I trade it for being able to make text-only notes much faster and better.

[kqr]

Fortunately, you are misinformed about pictures, at least. The other limitations may be true still.