Show HN: AlephNote – A Simplenote/Standardnote client | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: AlephNote – A Simplenote/Standardnote client

mikescher.github.io

44 pointsMikescher32 comments

Hello HN,

For the last few weeks I made my own notes client (mainly for [simplenote](https://simplenote.com/)) because the standard Electrum client felt pretty ... heavy.

Multiple backends are supported via plugins. Currently you can use it to access your notes on simplenote, Standard Note, Nectcloud/owncloud or no remote (aka local only).

I plan on adding Evernote support (only for plain, unformatted notes) and a better editor with a little bit of markdown highlighting (similiar to [qownnotes](http://www.qownnotes.org))

Tell me what you think and if you have ideas/criticism :D

You might want to indicate somewhere that this is for Windows only. I downloaded the source on my Linux machine and took a while figuring out that it's a MS Visual Studio project.

Hmm good point, I will add it to the landing page

Ran into same issue. Noted you put (Windows) on the download button, just assumed Linux had to be built from source.

I think you could add a UI project using Xamarin without much trouble and make the whole thing cross-platform with Linux, Mac and potentially Android/iOS support. From what I've seen the WPF-specific code is restricted to the AlephNote.App project in the WPF namespace. It should not be difficult to reuse the non-WPF code in a separate UI project.

I've been dying for an open-source replacement for Evernote and I've been looking for an opportunity to learn Xamarin so I'm willing to contribute this if you're interested.

That sounds - actually - pretty interesting.

But isn't Xamarin.Forms only for mobile platforms? I can't find any information about building desktop apps with it (but also my only experience with Xamarin is currently MonoGame).

Yes you're right, Xamarin Forms seems to be targeted at Windows/iOS/Android portability with a common XAML codebase. For cross-platform desktop apps the best choice seems to be something like [Gtk#](http://www.mono-project.com/docs/gui/gtksharp/] But I think the same principles would apply: the UI projects would utilize the non-platform specific code in AlephNote.App and the plugin framework etc. It would probably be necessary to have a separate Mobile UI project anyway, but it still would reuse a lot of the existing C# code.

I'm totally a beginner with Xamarin and Gtk# but I'd be willing to give this a shot. I really like how multiple backends are supported via plugins in AlephNote.

I created an issue [0] for this. I'm trying to find time today to organize the project structure for this, so that it shouldn't be too hard to add other UI frontends.

You are more than welcome to contribute, especially because I'm also completely unexperienced with GTK# :)

[0] https://github.com/Mikescher/AlephNote/issues/1

How many notes have you tested this with?

Similar apps choke pretty hard on large collections of notes (1,000+)

Wow, 1000+ notes o.O

My max. test case is around 100 notes. I honestly don't know how that many notes would perform, because all notes are always loaded.

If there is demand I could look into only lazy loading the actual note content and probabl other tweaks for big collections.

As an example, I use these apps for daily journaling, so I'll generate at least 365 notes a year. In practice, it's quite a few more.

When I was on Windows I used this - http://resoph.com/. Looks similar I think. Not sure that app is actively developed anymore (ins't open source). But it used to be good and only decent Simplenote client on Windows. Good to see options there.

On Mac I have been using NV so far. Though original NV hasn't seen any development for last 6 years it still just works. The last time I tried its famous fork (nvAlt) either something was broken (was beta or so can't recall) or I just saw that I don't need that at all. For my minimal and simple note taking vanilla NV is still what I need. NV is one app that I don't remember when it last crashed (maybe I don't use it enough).

Just wanted to throw out there for any macOS users I use nvALT [0] as a client for simple note on my macbook and love using it as a scratch pad for holding data while working on a problem or just a general "I need to make a quick list on the fly here and then copy it into something else later". I have mine set to a hotkey so I can hide/show it quickly and it's great.

[0] http://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/

nvALT is great. It's lack of synchronization with Standard Notes is the only reason I haven't used that service yet.

Huh, I had never heard of Standard Notes before this thread (I saw it mentioned in the OP but ignored it as I am happy with Simple Note) but it looks pretty neat. Yeah, if they had a client that was as fast/easy as nvALT I'd switch.

Not 100% sure, but I think the default Standard Notes client is an Electron application. If battery life is a concern, I'd stick with nvALT. Other note clients can use the Standard Note backend and that seems like a reasonable path, but I would avoid the Standard Notes client.

I use it daily. Plain text information, logs, etc. are the easiest to work with and search. No keywords or tags necessary.

I'd never heard of Standard Notes until today. Is there any reason I should switch to it (from Simplenote), if I'm not interested in self-hosting?

You don't need to self-host on Standard Notes. The app is focused on privacy and longevity. Check out https://standardnotes.org.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that I would have to self-host. I meant to ask what the advantages were over Simplenote. The option to self-host is one. But I wondered about the other advantages.

I see on that page they say "That's why we built Standard File ... backs up your data to multiple locations, ...", and this sounds interesting (I'm not sure of the best way to backup Simplenote data, except perhaps with a combination of nvpy and git) but the Standard File page doesn't talk about backups at all.

How do you ensure your data doesn't go away?

I also use nvalt on Mac. I also use these:

- nvpy on linux

- Notational Acceleration on Android (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kludgenics...). It hasn't been updated in 4 years, but it works well, and syncs with simplenote in the background

I don't know if it's bad form to do feature requests on HN but having gone through a lot of these note clients (see list [here](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13642527)) the three-ish features that I'd like to see on a note client that can, but does not have to, sync to the cloud and that I couldn't seem to find in a single one are:

* Support for LaTeX math notation (like Zim-Wiki) * Support for code (like Quiver) * a good, clean UI if possible with a dark mode so that I can stare at it for long periods of time

Standard Notes has support for code, can theoretically support a LaTeX editor, and has a clean UI (but no dark mode yet). See extensions: https://standardnotes.org/extensions

Have you ever tried [org-mode][1]? It's an emacs major mode for taking notes, making to-do lists, building websites, having an agenda, etc... It's quite powerful since it's basically a markup language. It can be exported to multiple formats (including latex) and supports writing code and even executing it inside the same file with [babel][2].

Everything's saved as a plain text file so you can sync them across different devices with Dropbox, Drive or even git (which I use).

[^1](http://orgmode.org/)

[^2](http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/)

I've tried emacs a long time ago but could never get it to stick. With everybody advising me to switch to org-mode I might have to give it another try.

Hey! This looks cool for people that might use those backends.

What motivated you to do it? What are the benefits of using your client instead of the backends default ones?

Hi,

I have to admit it was mostly because I didn't like the electrum clients. I just felt wrong to have a program always in the background runnning that permanently uses 250MB RAM.

Also last time I tested it, it ran pretty slow on my machine. But it could be that this has become better.

This looks really nice. I like the support for multiple backend storage options. Any plans to port this to Mac or Linux?

Not when I posted it here :D.

But it seems like there is interest [0] and it doesn't look too complicated. So yes, I will try to add an additional frontend with Gtk# for Linux/Mac.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13806328

Very clean looking. Nice!

I thought this said AlephOne and had a serious bout of nostalgia.

Smashing the stack?

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