Ask HN: What is your favorite way of taking notes?
I am looking for an open source, free from ads app for my laptop and phone. What do you use?
I always carry a pocket sized notebook and a pen with me wherever I go. It's still the fastest method to write something down, it always works and it's socially acceptable to use in all situations. Most people whom I meet, even in private, will see me take out my notebook at the beging of the meeting, taking notes occasionally while we interact. I don't think you could do that with a computer or phone and it allows me to remember important details and action points that I (and the person I'm talking to) would forget otherwise. At work I have larger, A4-sized notebooks that I use similarly.
One of the features that I appreciate most is that everything I write down is in chronological order and can be accessed very quickly. In seconds, I can go through last weeks notes and check if I forgot to do something, or even go back a year or more to revisit my thoughts on something that happened back then. Using a pen is also much more expressive, allowing me to highlight/format certain points as a discussion/meeting is ongoing and add illustrations, arrows etc. on the fly.
I've seen and tried some of the new epaper notepads and they're definitely getting closer, but for now they're still to slow, clumsy & fragile to replace paper for me.
Besides that I use Apple Notes. They sync and work flawlessly between iOS and Mac devices.
And lastly, pen and paper. I like writing things down.
- edit
- organize (heck, you can even search!)
But I'm a maths student and I never came across anything where I can efficiently write equations and formulas, before Emacs + Org-mode.
I have now been using Emacs + Org-mode + Yasnippet for a year, and it's bloody amazing. When it comes to efficiently including latex-expressions in my org-notes, Yasnippet is an absolute must.
And because this is Org-mode, I can export all my notes to HTML, PDF, etc. Adding a bit of customization, you get something like this http://www.retiredparkingguard.com/notes/. If you go to one of the note-pages with a bit of maths on it, e.g. mathematics/geometry.html, you should see a bar on the right displaying the notation used in each section. This requires javascript.
I also make heavy use of customized named blocks in my note-taking, e.g.
#+name: def:schrodinger-equation
#+begin_definition
...
#+end_definition
And then, using org-ref, I can do a `M-x org-ref-insert-ref-link` anywhere in the document and I can search through all these definitions, theorems, etc.
These blocks, when exported to HTML, are also given CSS classes, hence you can easily give these styling, making the reading experience into whatever you want.
Finally, I would also suggest org-ref by John Kitchin (https://github.com/jkitchin/org-ref); it makes organizing papers and the corresponding notes so incredibly easy.
All together this makes note-taking such a breeze and lowers the barrier for me to re-read and edit my notes significantly, compared to handwritten notes.
I also heavily annotate equations (color code, add description, etc)
How do you get around this?
But for the specific use-cases you mentioned:
- Org-mode allows you to integrate code into the document, hence to draw a function you could easily write a small snippet of code outputting a plot, which will be embedded in the document.
- I actually do this sometimes too! For the color-coding, Org-mode allows you to embedd arbitrary LaTeX such as "\textcolor{red}{\alpha}". I've set up a Yasnippet which lets me type "color + [TAB]" and expands to "\textcolor{}{}" with my cursor inside the curly brackets. I type "red" and hit TAB again, and then type whatever I want to be coded in red. For descriptions, I'm unsure why you couldn't as easily do this in a document. In my documents I usually have a larger body of text deriving/explaining the equation, and then I simply put the equation into a definition-block for further reference. Then I know that I can jump to its definition, and I'll find a more thorough explanation of it.
For information you want to retrieve easily later on: markdown files (avoid any wiki-like format that isn't widely used) + some way to sync those files (e.g. unison, synching, Dropbox etc.). The app doesn't really matter but I use vim on my workstation, notebook, phone, tablet etc.
For overviews, outlines, mind maps, notes in a meeting: a white sheet of paper. You can scan it, put keywords in the filename etc. I avoid tech in meetings.
For sketches: a small notebook (A6 format) I always carry with me. At my age, it's more natural for me to think with a pen in my hand than with a keyboard below my fingers.
If it's knowledge I want to aggregate or reference later, I use OneNote.
It has minimal features, namely tagging/folders for organization. Makes navigating between my notes fast and easy, and the minimal amount of text formatting allows me to jot thoughts down without being overwhelmed by the desire to format things the right way, which is counterproductive to me.
I found it to be worthwhile enough that I actually pay for it to take advantage of its additional plugins (markdown, dark theme)
For phone, I use Evernote or Jotterpad.
Evernote is only when I really want to store the notes for the future. If they're disposable, I just care about how fast I can write.
BTW, you should also look into being able to type quickly. I find a critical weakness in taking notes on my phone was that I couldn't write as fast as I think, and I would drop a lot of thoughts. I recommend getting enough practice to hit 50 WPM at 100% accuracy.
I use Sublime for notes but store them as plain text files. My other favorite Sublime feature is it persists unsaved tabs through app restarts and system restarts thereby giving me the effect of holding on to my notes until I'm ready to actually save. A lot of stuff I just need temporarily.
It works well on every device, supports simple text notes or fancy formatting, good sharing options, good live multiuser editing, inline comment threads, free to use, works offline, keyboard shortcuts, etc...
Sublime Text - I use it to take notes when I can type on the laptop. Usually I write a lot of text (for example during a meeting). It's just text, no markdown or something like that, and no plugins.
Google Keep - For when I don't have the laptop with me. Since the data goes to the cloud, I often copy these notes over to a text file on the laptop, especially when I want to add more details.
Screenshots - I have noticed that for many things, like watching online courses, I take a screenshot of the part I want to take notes about, and then just organize the screenshots into folders. Works quite well because it saves a lot of time, and I don't have to watch out for typos.
I tried a few others before and I think git and Typora or TiddlyWiki would do the job as well. Both solutions lack a bit on mobile platforms though.
-Better organization with notebooks->pages->sub-pages->sub-sub-pages
-paste screenshots and search text inside images
-paste entire website contents with images and hyperlinks
-colorful source formatting for text/code snippets like Ms Word
-custom template styles for pages like todo, meeting list
-attach any file ( like pdf, word, conf) within page or paste the whole file as a page with source formatting
-share notebooks online with team for editing
Taking notes digitally without syncing, I'd say stick to your current favored plain text editor. For syncing, there isn't a lot of good stuff out there. You'll be stuck with closed source (like Apple Notes) or using a generic syncing or versioning system like Git, Dropbox, GDrive, S3 etc.
That said, orgzly is org-mode for android and works pretty well. It's FLOSS.
That's why I'm using nVALT, I just wish it had some better formatting options.
Mobile: Dropbox text files. Also they interoperate well with the above.
It's more actively developed and deviates a bit from the extreme simplicity of Workflowy. I haven't looked back though. :)
But it’s not open source
Will look out for your Show HN when you launch a 1.0 :)
You might check out TiddlyWiki. Open source, and will run almost anywhere.
I also use paper to draw things, preferably: whitelines (seriously nice, easy to scan, not expensive IMO)
I need something that syncs with my phone.
i take class notes and pdf markup in Notability.
during meetings i use paper.