[benrbray]

I've enjoyed all the recent HN posts about notetaking software! (Roam, org-roam, Obsidian, Zettlr, Code Notes...)

It seems the main point of Code Notes is to serve a static site, but I'd love to see the author turn it into an editor by hooking up a ProseMirror [2] instance :)

Out of curiosity, what solutions do others use for tags/categorization/full-text search of their notes? Code Notes seems to use FlexSearch.js [1].

[1]: https://github.com/nextapps-de/flexsearch [2]: https://prosemirror.net/

[hydroxideOH-]

Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but I used fuse.js [1] for a side project recently. It seemed to work well for me and it was fairly easy to set up.

[1]: https://fusejs.io/

[lukevp]

We’re building a new note app on top of Quill. ProseMirror is great but it’s lacking a little in out of box usability. We’ll consider moving to another editor as we get more traction.

In our app, we have a dynamic flexsearch index for full text search, and support for filtering by tags in multiple ways while also doing full text search.

There are 3 techniques for categorizing. One, called contexts, is like a separate notebook. Tags and note data are totally separate from each other in each context. Within a context you have mentions (for people) and topics. Topics support heirarchy, so you can have Projects as well as projects/NoteBrook, as deeply nested as you want, and you can search for any level of nesting.

The search engine then supports full text search along with AND for tags at the same time.

If you register for an account, you also get instant sync to all your devices.

A new version is coming out this weekend, we’re still in alpha. The next version will have note favoriting, deleting, and editing, along with some better workflow for nested tags. We expect to launch the Beta in June with apps on every major platform (desktop and mobile).

If you have a chance to give us a try, please let us know how you like it! https://NoteBrook.app and the early access code is ALPHA2020. Email us at hello at NoteBrook.com

[benrbray]

Looks great, I'll try to check again in a few days for the new version!

Other than tags/search, one thing that is very important to me is "first-class" math support, where I can enter LaTeX math notation that renders inline, but which behaves like text whenever the cursor enters the math block. In general, I always appreciate when editors locally "act like" a plain text file near the cursor, but abstract away all the markup wherever I'm not directly editing. Two editors that get this right are Typora (inline-level editing) and Jupyter notebooks (block-level editing).

I agree that ProseMirror has a steep learning curve, and there aren't currently enough open-source extensions available. Hopefully, with time, enough standard components will emerge. In the future, I hope to see a ProseMirror-backed drop-in Markdown editor become the default for browser-based editing.

ProseMirror doesn't currently have standard support for wysiwyg-math, but I've recently been working to change that [1]:

[1]: proof of concept: https://codesandbox.io/s/quizzical-austin-m7n3t?file=/src/in...

[lukevp]

Thanks for the kind comments! I will put your vote in for this feature and bookmark the link for future reference. Our focus is on expanding the feature set in ways that are more emergent, so the UI stays very clean and straightforward and features that users don’t use don’t clutter up the interface. This seems like a good candidate for a feature that could be only available to those who need it and not affect the workflow of others by working similarly to the # flow.

Would a good workflow be to type a hot key to pop open a full screen editor for the math notation, like how the # or @ work when typed? Perhaps with a live preview as you type?

What would be a reasonable key to trigger that, is there a standard trigger key for math like there is @ for people and # for hashtags?

[benrbray]

Normally there are two types of math: inline and block. Inline math is delimited with single dollar signs like $x+y=5$, while display math uses two dollar signs with newlines, like

    $$
    \int_a^b f'(x) dx = f(b)-f(a)
    $$

You can find some GIFs of the ideal behavior here [1], but it's understandable that such a thing might not be a priority for most users.

The next best thing would definitely be a popup! A natural toggle button would be $, though it may make more sense to only insert math on a quick double-tap of $, so users can still write about money :). Assigning it to CTRL+4 or similar might also be a good compromise.

[1]: https://github.com/benrbray/prosemirror-math