[throwaway72v2]

I tried LiquidText some time ago, as it looked well suited for the intense period of self-learning I was about to embark on. It was indeed very good overall, except for the lack of one essential feature, which was an absolute deal-breaker:

I can't search for my own notes.

The searches turn up everything in the texts written by others that you put into this app, but not the stuff you yourself write.

No serious learning from any non-trivial text is possible unless the learner can engage in a dialogue with the text. There are entire books and academic journals dedicated to marginalia and reader commentary through the centuries. I'm not going to use a piece of learning-related technology if it renders me completely unable to go back to my own thoughts on a subject, which I put work into.

[helloworm]

For those wondering why there is all this discussion in these apps rather than just usingb vim or org mode; these apps mentioned here all are first-class-ink apps. (Trying to make the analogy to first-class-function PL’s).

So, here the discussion is on apps that have native ink support (for iOS, that would be via iPad and Apple Pencil).

So I guess they don’t have search because a majority of users use liquidtext primarily with inked notes or pasted inked notes from the clipboard. I guess text extraction is way harder of a problem to solve - hence no searching.

Text boxes are still very useful for title boxes and also detailed paragraphs of concentrated info - again, I used both of these in liquidtext but was immediately frustrated with even the lack of keyboard shortcuts for making text bold/underlined, changing sizes, or color. I did contact their support to request adding in keyboard shortcuts.. but instead they added in other more complicated features such as some weird inking mode switch. Hmmm adding in keyboard shortcuts for bold and changing size and color vs a switchable “inking”-mode .. surely the former is dead easy compared to the latter .....

[throwaway72v2]

To speak for myself, I don't care about ink. I don't even use Apple's pencil. I want to type things into a comment box and be able to search for what I typed later.

This app got started in 2012. It's 2020, and I can't.

[helloworm]

Agreed. Searching in non ink should be a piece of cake. I suspect it’s been unimplemented for the same reason that my own request for keyboard shortcuts for bold/underline/change-size has been ignored - they don’t really care about user needs and only do the stuff they like. Which tells you something about the management of the product ...

[craigst]

My apologies for the unimplemented features! Please know it's not because we don't care, we have real-human tech support for even our free users because we desperately care. But we have to focus on the largest demand requests. Fwiw, the biggest request is desktop support, which are in beta now.