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Comment by shawkinaw | Hacker News Reader

My problem with all these types of apps is: What happens when the app goes away? This is partly why I use org-mode, because it's just a text file, more or less perfectly usable without actually being in org-mode. So I'd love to see an app like Inkdrop which stores everything as readable text. (I didn't see anything about file format on the page, but might have missed it.)

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Markdown (.md) is the format and outputs what is essentially a text file. The translation to nice and proper formatting that you see on the right hand side is what the apps are for. Granted there are in-line symbols throughout if you just look at the raw file, but I don't think markdown converters will die out anytime soon.

...which is why I moved all my notes to quiver from evernote. The format is open and is extremely well designed (https://github.com/HappenApps/Quiver/wiki/Quiver-Data-Format). And someone's used it to build an android app. So with the notes stored on google drive and the notes folder set to sync, I have access to my notes on all devices.

With Simplenote, you can use Notational Velocity (or nvALT) to maintain a plain text copy of your notes locally.

Huge fan of nvAlt. I made a theme to make the markdown rendering closer to github and added some extra features.

https://github.com/bwiggs/nvalt-prime

unrelated, is nvalt totally abandoned by now?

nvalt will not be updated, no, but continues to work fine.

meanwhile, its authors are coding a new commercial version.

> http://brettterpstra.com/2015/09/14/an-nvalt-and-more-status...

nice. thanks for the info.

I second org-mode, being using it for years. I had to write a couple of scripts to update my notes to newer versions, but it went mostly painless. I however found myself using more and more plain text recently without much markups. There is certain mental ease and simplicity in writing:

    ed
    a
    Just write what's in my mind.
    .
    w now/figure/a/path/to/save
    q

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