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Comment by therealmarv | Hacker News Reader

Hm, no, simply cannot afford 144$/y for another cloud note system. Please, we need this: Note taking done right: Android, iOS, Desktop, Markdown & HTML & Pictures, easy flat file format (preferred markdown), Web clipper, archive notes, offline and do this all without wasting whitespace (no document editor like Evernote) and good sync and instant search results while you type. <- would spend a bigger double digit number $ on this, but no subscription. Closest I've found is Google Keep.

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You might be interested by [Laverna](https://laverna.cc/). It's not as full-featured as Google keep but it does work offline and let you encrypt and sync your notes via dropbox, which I find to be more important than pure looks. The other alternative would be [Turtl](https://turtlapp.com/) but you need to host the server somewhere (although I imagine just hosting it localy would work as well).

Laverna looks not bad (beside the white space, if I want to edit a long markdown document I will use something else). Thanks, I will try it out. Turtle (which looks like a private Google Keep) I wanted to try out two days ago but could not register. Do you know if Turtle does some caching? Beeing dependent on Internet (connection) for notes is something which I want to avoid entirely (actually Google Keep is good at that thing, works offline).

Turtl would be great if not for the reliance on a server. I think they do some caching (their settings page has "erase local data") but since it relies on a login anyway it still requires an "always on" connection.

I agree completely on Laverna, but I think it's the closest to what you (and I) are looking for. I wish I wasn't so lazy/busy and got the motivation to fork it and implement the changes I want (I don't care for the double panel and the white space everywhere).

I just tried Laverna, and I want to love it because simple markdown+Dropbox sync+encryption is exactly what I want, but it's buggy as hell. I can't type a single sentence without it erasing a period, or jumping back to a state containing text I deleted...

You might like Standard Notes[1]. It's an open source project I and a few others are working on. Focuses on longevity, portability, and privacy. Has full offline support and end-to-end encryption, as well as support for 3rd party extensions like Dropbox sync.

[1] https://standardnotes.org

The closest to this I found is Org Mode in Emacs. Pros and cons:

  + it's free
  + it's a flat, text format, human-readable and editable even outside Org Mode
  + has one of the best table editors ever
  + off-line first, no cloud bullshit
  + can handle source code and images pretty well
  + awesome export options - including LaTeX, HTML and nicely formatted UTF-8 plaintext
  + infinite flexibility of Emacs

  - infinite flexibility of Emacs
  - not Markdown (for those who care)
  - you have to do sync yourself (I do with Dropbox)
  - limited support for mobile (Orgzly is OK and works w/ Dropbox sync, but very limited
    functionality compared to what Org Mode in Emacs provides)

Read that one before. I'm getting more and more used to the simple Emacs shortcuts on the Mac (because it's build in to some degree). But I don't know if I have enough time to learn it... used to Sublime and VSCode coding here ;)

Emacs + EVIL mode. Life changer for me. If you are not familiar with vi-keybindings, I highly suggest everyone to take the time and learn them. It's not as hard as it seems and will increase your productivity while editing text 100-fold.

Does Org-mode handle images? If not, that's an issue for a lot of creative work.

Yes, org-mode can handle images.

And Android & iOS? How's the web clipper?

Good enough for documents. Not good enough for "creative work". Emacs can display images (but not really edit them - or at least I'm not aware of an appropriate elisp package ;)), and you can make Org Mode display the images you link to in-line. Including ones you generate from code snippets in your .org file, which makes the whole thing pretty useful for scientific computing :).

Ah, interesting - I might have to give it a try some time. Thanks!

> 144$/y for another cloud note system

That's astonishingly expensive for what it is. Microsoft OneNote is free. Even office 365 "home premium" is only $100/y and comes with a load of storage.

If it's something I would use daily, that seems pretty cheap: less than 40 cents / day.

A company like Microsoft can afford to price its consumer software to maximize marketshare. Bootstrapped startups shouldn't bother to compete with the same approach.

Of course they should compete. They should provide better value. That doesn't necessarily mean it has to be less expensive though.

Freemium applications usually have nothing between the free tier and the professional tier. I'd pay for a lot more services if there was a personal or supporter tier. For something like this, I'd pay $25 / year. That means every time I launch it, I'd be paying between ten and twenty-five cents.

Basecamp is another service that's worth about that much to me, but they don't offer a personal or family tier.

I actually totally agree and we're looking at tweaking our pricing options for Milanote to reflect this idea :)

Customers at those sort of price points are often more trouble than they are worth.

It's actually a pretty competitive price. InvisionApp is $15/month at its cheapest which allows only 3 prototypes at a time.

Apps targeted at designers are usually pretty expensive. I already pay $79/month to have full access to Adobe cloud apps.

Adobe is a different story, sort of what the whole livelihood is built on.

I just sync a directory of markdown files (and subdirectories) with Dropbox, and use whatever editor is appropriate on whatever desktop/mobile OS.

Easy, simple, no botnet.

> with Dropbox

If you replace that with owncloud then maybe no botnet.

I actually do the same thing with a private Bit Bucket git repository. I have a shell script sync to my Note 3 and use MarkdownX on that device to edit and read.

What about Tiddlywiki[0] in a cloud drive, own server or USB stick?

You can customize it with lots of extensions to do this "creative" stuff, from drawings to mind-maps, etc.

[0] http://tiddlywiki.com/

Tiddlywiki is pretty good. I liked it the last time I was using it (some years ago). What I did not liked is the image handling on Tiddlywiki... it took too long or better to say it was a little to complicated when you do this often. TiddlyWiki is a good example of NOT wasting whitespace. I want to manage little tiny notes, not documents :)

Don't check all of those boxes, but the visual, hierarchical notes idea reminds me of what I'm trying to do with my iPad (soon to be universal) app Mindscope, just that my app is on a far simpler level since it's text only. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mindscope-mind-mapping-outli...

My setup is: directory with Markdown files on encfs mounted from ciphertext on a Dropbox, exposed via WebDAVS behind the password. I use Noteboks app[1] for iOS (it keeps notes offline, but can sync with WebDAV). On a desktop I use my own webapp similar to the Simplenote/nvALT (I probably could use nvALT or similar too).

[1] http://www.notebooksapp.com/

I'm curious... is this notebooksapp using a flat file structure always on the Mac (tried to figure out on their website) ? Bummer I don't use iOS. And it seems a text only note taking system does not work for me (otherwise I would also use nvalt, iawriter etc. already)

Notebooks app is an iOS app, so not sure what it uses internally, but it syncs with the directory tree of plain text, Markdown, or HTML files. It does support HTML and pictures, I do not use it, but it might be a good step towards your use case.

Thanks.

I'm also evaluating using VSCode (it's perfect markdown preview) and this plugin for easy image pasting https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=mushan.v... .

And I was also looking into using mkdocs for serving a bunch of Markdown files in a directory to a structured webpage including search (which works great it seems).

But I'm not 100% happy... does not eliminate all of my bucket list but is a pretty independent flat file format.

I am in the middle of developing this right now, but it already checks quite a few of your boxes: https://github.com/NickBusey/BulletNotes

> would spend a bigger double digit number $ on this, but no subscription

Curious how you think they'd be able to keep the servers running indefinitely at a one-time purchase price?

For realtime sync I can understand subscription models but I would be fine with Dropbox/Google Drive etc.

Xournal on (linux) or Onenote for android and ios should suffice as alternatives to ease your gripe

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