[pingswept]

I've been keeping a project journal in a series of notebooks for a few years. As I've filled more and more notebooks, I miss the searchability of computerized journals. For a while, kept a text file open all the time and tried using it as a journal, but that's lousy for any kind of sketching.

My most recent attempt has been a pile of Markdown files in a Github repository. I edit them directly in Github's editor and they are automatically rendered by Github, so I get nice syntax highlighting and working links. It has the added advantage that I can send people links to whatever I'm struggling with, like "Here's the error message I'm getting: <link>."

Here's my log: https://github.com/pingswept/dev-log (Obviously, this only works because most of what I do these days is open source, but it could work just as well on an intranet.)

I've been creating a new file for each day's log, but I think that might not be quite the right approach. It makes searching a little more difficult (though still much easier than notebooks), but makes editing easier because I don't have to scroll to the bottom of a huge file to start typing.

If anyone has suggestions of better ways to do this, I'm definitely interested.

(Hmmm. Maybe there's a keyboard shortcut for skip-to-bottom-of-file in the Github editor. Edit: hey, there is! Command-down-arrow.)

[follower]

I've mentioned Labradoc (http://labradoc.com/) elsewhere on this thread but it seems like it might be worth you considering it too.

More so, if it doesn't suit you I'd be interested to know why--given you seem to have implemented a more manual approach to what Labradoc aims to do.

The major difference from what you've described is that Labradoc has a project-based rather than day-based focus. (Although there's no reason why a "day view" couldn't be an option...)

(Labradoc also uses Markdown.)

[pingswept]

I actually noticed your Labradoc comment earlier and took a look. It's more or less what I'm looking for, without the weirdness of being embedded in Github. There are 2 reasons I'm not switching to it right now:

1. My system already works fine.

2. The default styling of Labradoc doesn't suit me. The blue/purple links and left-aligned text have a 2005ish look to me. Those would presumably be pretty easy to fix with a CSS overlay of some sort, but that would require a little tweaking.

But still, Labradoc looks like pretty much the same solution that I came up with, so I like it!

One suggestion: make the example have a link or screenshots to something that shows the Markdown side of things. Is there an editor? What does it look like? Even a screenshot tour would help lure people in.

[FrojoS]

I looked for such a light markup language for a long time, but it also should work offline. What made me realize that this would be useful, was the bitbucket wiki. So, quite similar to your experience.

Than I found org-mode. We're happily together for over a month now ...

[pingswept]

Yeah, if my vim infection weren't so advanced, I would investigate org-mode more closely.