OpenNote – an open web-based alternative to Microsoft OneNote and EverNote | Hacker News Reader

OpenNote – an open web-based alternative to Microsoft OneNote and EverNote

github.com

91 pointscaberus63 comments

While I certainly appreciate the attempt to create more competition in this market, as well as adding an open-source competitor, it has a ways to go before it will actually be a competitor. And it doesn't have a few features that I find incredibly invaluable as an Evernote user:

* Native UI and sync to every device under the sun. I have a Windows gaming desktop, a Macbook Air, iPad, and Windows Phone. Being able to access everything in Evernote across all devices is highly valuable to me.

* Indexing of documents and text in images. I'm the kind of person who still keeps a paper journal and pen with him at almost all times, which is finally starting to be replaced because of Evernote. They have an app for writing on the iPad which syncs with their service, and they later index all of my handwriting so I can search it. That is one of the most valuable things to me, and any competitor would have to do as well or better for me to want to switch.

* Hooks in with different types of apps. Such as Evernote Food. I love to cook and collect recipes, and I would need to be able to do something similar, easily, in any competitor. This also hooks in with the image text indexing, where I can take photos of recipes from my iPad and eventually I'll be able to search for the text in the recipe.

* Web clipper. I cannot even begin to express how valuable this is. There have been multiple times where I was able to find something I clipped from a couple years ago that I desperately needed. Or a recipe that I clipped, which I now can't find via search engine but is comfortably nestled in Evernote.

Don't take this as a downer comment. I love it when there is more competition, because it makes everyone step their game up. Meaning I get better quality of service, as well as everyone else who uses any of those services. It's a hard field you entered into, with a couple of great competitors. But keep up the hard work, and keep improving.

Its open source, so all of the features can be added relatively painlessly.

Yes, they can be added. But it will be far from painless. And it will take a while. Even creating a UI for iOS that feels good and works well will take months. Especially because people have to donate time out of their busy lives to add to the project.

A lot more people have less busy lives than you think. I know of at least two forks that started this afternoon. :)

Good to hear it's getting forked. Hopefully those turn into real pull requests for the project :) And that it gains real momentum.

I agree with you and same points will keep me with Evernote for some time.

I'd love to see the app evolve though! Something that I can deploy on my server and have access to all the code is definitely great.

> it has a ways to go before it will actually be a competitor. And it doesn't have a few features that I find incredibly invaluable as an Evernote user:

[list of features snipped out]

As an Octave developer, I frequently hear exactly the same things about Octave vs Matlab, and if I listen too closely, I find it disheartening. Why work on something that will forever suck and not be a competitor, and can't implement the full list of features because we don't have the giant budget of our non-free competitor?

But then I remember that people are typically more flexible than they appear to be when they write these lists, and you'll discover that they may do without some of the features that they list, at least in some circumstances. And that there exist many other people with different lists of sine qua nons who will use the free as in freedom alternative you're working on because they have different needs.

So, to the OpenNote developers and to anyone else implementing a FAIF replacement I say this: don't let these giant lists of features and suggestions about how you'll never be competitive grind you down. There are many people out there who will appreciate your work, sometimes even the people who compiled these lists. Look at the lists, see what you can implement, and don't be disheartened by the parts that seem impossible to implement. Who knows, maybe some day someone will come along and help you implement the parts that seem so hopeless to you.

Keep your chin up, free software devs!

Octave is awesome. MATLAB can go die in a fire (purely for the reason of being non-free, otherwise it's great too).

If there's one thing that Octave is absolutely better than MATLAB is the alternative syntax for things like strings and ~=.

Octave is indeed awesome. I completed my Machine Learning course at Coursera thanks to it. :) Always take what the vocal minority says with a grain of salt.

I'm not a paid user of Evernote, so perhaps I don't matter, but I am a daily user, and I only use the first bullet point listed here -- native applications on three different operating systems. I don't use any of the advanced features of Evernote and I don't even use multiple notebooks.

That is to say, an open-source Evernote competitor won't be able to meet the needs of 100% of Evernote's users, but it will be able to capture some fraction of those users. I'm personally very interested in an open-source Evernote that I can run on my own server.

In the Credits section:

   Microsoft - For making terrible products
   Evernote - For making better products in a slightly evil way

MSFT does make some lousy products, but OneNote seems decent enough. And Evernote is a commercial product, but I don't necessarily see it being evil.

But those matters were obviously pain points for others.

It's not decent enough, it's truly awesome! In fact it's the only reason I am reluctant to switch to a Mac.

I hate to be negative about this but this certainly doesn't seem comparable to either OneNote or EverNote. Both of these products seem far superior to this.

+1 The credits on the site speak volumes about the author: "Microsoft - For making terrible products Evernote - For making better products in a slightly evil way"

That is quite the snarky attitude towards predecessors. This project reads like someone wrote a vastly simplified version of onenote claiming its superiority.

That's like taking CK Editor, putting it on a web page, backing it with a database and calling it a "replacement" for MS word and google docs because microsoft sucks and google is evil.

I wonder if it is possible to create an "ultimate" notetaking application. What I found out is that whether it is "open" is not important to me, but the GUI is. For example, organizing notes in a folder tree doesn't work for me - I need to have them in a list, tagged and instantly searchable.

So far, I settled with ResophNotes (and SimpleNote backend), since I found out that the speed of the New note dialog launch is of a great importance to me, and ResophNotes is instaneous, and generally very quick due to it's text-only nature.

This is the route I go, I used RespohNotes on a Windows box and nvAlt on OSX. Global hot-key and I'm typing, either searching for an existing note, or creating a new one.

This is the approach I'm attempting to take with Cof8 - https://www.cof8.com/private

It's in beta at the moment but I've found tags and list work really well for super fast searching.

Has anyone noticed that the usage restriction:

"This software(OpenNote) cannot be sold as a product, as a component, as a service, or in any other way unless a distribution license is purchased from the author(J. Liscom)"

is incompatible with its (OpenNote) license (GPLv3)?

It would be, but GPLv3 states, in section 7, paragraph 4:

    If the Program as you received it, or any part of it, contains a
    notice stating that it is governed by this License along with a
    term that is a further restriction, you may remove that term.

So the author just didn't read GPLv3 and added meaningless additional restrictions.

That is what I mean, basically :^)

There's a bug report about this:

https://github.com/FoxUSA/OpenNote/issues/7

Although it was opened 39 minutes ago :)

I would love to see an EverNote/OneNote replacement that was based on the filesystem and git. In addition to a great web UI, any client could then access and edit notes via git. Sync could be provided with Github or your own repo.

Maybe markdown + git + nice UI clients?

I think that's a great idea - I take it you mean a direct mapping of notes and attachments into some sensible directory structure?

Yes, pretty much. Maybe it exists?

I'd love to know if it does - I can see that OneNote is pretty slick but I'd prefer something that has a nice UI (with notes, proper drawings, images and attachments) with a sane directory based storage format.

NB I have tried Evernote but couldn't quite get into it - I make do with a combination of ever expanding Google Docs documents and text files open in whatever editor I'm using that week...

I have some awful elisp code that glues together org mode, iimage.el and Deft to do something along these lines. All notes are stored as plain text with images in a sensible directory structure. I don't use git, everything just sits in a Dropbox folder. Emacs works well for me as the UI, but there's no reason a web-based UI couldn't be written. I could look into tidying it up over the Christmas break and publishing it if there's interest.

I would be interested, though probably not so much in the web UI for it - Emacs would be fine.

I would also be interested! A sane structure for embedding images within org-mode notes is one thing that I haven't bothered to make a solution for. (Instead, I defected to Zim.)

I've been using nValt + DropBox for about 18 months now. I haven't really missed Evernote. Plus all my stuff is available in any easy to search text document format, not locked into any applications.

I can access from mobile via different applications, too.

A file-based wiki like dokuwiki wouldn't suffice the requirements, I suppose.

Only maybe if hosted on Dropbox public folder.

I use Notational Velocity[1] + markdown + Dropbox for taking and organizing notes. You can set it to use regular files or rtf, which is nice because then I can pull up or edit my notes anywhere I have dropbox synced (like my phone)

[1] Actually the nvALT fork: http://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/

Being web-based is a blocker for me. No offline with multi-device store-forward sync means any other merits become semantic.

What I'd pay money for is OneNote with credible encryption.

Also I'd pay money for a very good OneNote (clone) for Linux! OneNote just has no competition...

Why not use something like Hood.ie?

http://blog.hood.ie/2013/11/say-hello-to-offline-first/

Why compare this to OneNote? It doesn't seem to fit the same use cases as OneNote, which is optimized for pen based input.

Because it seems like the developer never used it, otherwise he would not write thank Microsoft "For making terrible products" in the credits.

Exactly. OneNote is the only piece of software I've used that does stylus-based notetaking right. And Microsoft has been supporting this stuff all the way along, which means notes you take today won't be obsolete tomorrow.

I use OneNote extensively, on multiple devices, on a daily basis. I have never used pen input. I know many OneNote users. None use pen input.

Feels more like an Evernote clone to me, though it needs a lot of work. For instance when you load a note you need to click edit to enter editing mode which coming from Evernote feels very clunky. I'm also not sure why there needs to be a long fade-in for everything... one of the most important things for me in a note taking application is the ability to quickly create notes.

Nitpicking aside, it's great to see more people trying to compete with Evernote. There seems to be a serious lack of note taking applications where I can simply take rich text, HTML, or images and place them in a note.

Since someone already mentioned why it isn't an alternative to OneNote...

What's obviously missing (compared to Evernote):

1. Web Clipper

2. Android support

it has Android support

By Android support I mean taking advantage of native resources -- camera, local storage (therefore autosaving), smooth UI, etc.

Somebody has to say it, as a sacrifice for the HN crowd I take the role of the DB:

It is unbelievable how many people that read "HN" - obviously considering themselves beeing "Hackers" - are not able to understand the basic requirements of a real hacker (TM) note taking app:

- it has to be open source - you do not want to hand over your personal notes to some unknown company and their decision making process, maybe they will just disappear or not support their product anymore.

- it has to have an open and good documented data format - you do not want your notes to disappear in an undocumented binary blob.

- if there is any way to sync data with other instances / machines, the sync server of course has to be open sourced and available for usage on your own server.

- of course some more functional things like versioning via git and it has to be lightning fast.

This is for the "cool hackers" that are STILL using services like dropbox, evernote or onenote. Learn it: these services are for uneducated people who did not understand anything. Please do not hurt the eyes of HN readers with advertising these anti-privacy services here, thanks!

I'm a huge Evernote fan and I love the look of this, but MySQL - seriously?

I don't like MySQL either. But it's probably the perfect choice. Or perhaps you think something webscale[1] is required?

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2F-DItXtZs

I'm a fan of relational databases, just not MySQL. I've been administering MySQL, PostgreSQL and Oracle (not to mention a few others I'm too embarrassed to mention) for some time now and MySQL is a right pain in the ass. I'd rather see it use PostgreSQL. Love the video by the way!

http://grimoire.ca/mysql/choose-something-else

If you're running an instance for yourself, or only a few users, SQLite would seem like the obvious choice. That avoids the hassle of running a separate database server.

The project uses the PDO database abstraction library, so supporting other database back-ends in the future would not be a major task.

Good, thanks.

As somebody who uses SimpleNote I welcome competition to this area. Primarily because I've pleaded with SimpleNote crew to let me have documentation to their latest API as I maintain the simplenote.el, Emacs frontend for it. Only to be consistently ignored.

Evernote already broke the access to their app via the existing Emacs mode.

So any app eats into this market is welcome. Thanks again.

I would love to see this support http://tent.io. I still need to look more deeply into the architecture of Tent, but from my cursory examination, it seems like a really ideal solution to the lack of cloud services that let users own their own data.

Ever since I bought a Wacom tablet to take notes.. all of these apps do not beat xournal. Granted I cannot use it to take notes on my phone, I don't really need it as I can only take good notes with my Wacom tablet anyway.

I can't draw on it.

The demo site is here: http://stardrive.us/OpenNote/

you can use this to login/password: crap/password

> web based alternative

Well, that kills it for me. I have yet to see a web app whose latency desktop apps.

I couldn't see from a scan through the docs- does any-one know if it does attachments?

I was pleased to see that you can copy and paste images into the text editor - so it can certainly handle image attachments.

Dragging and dropping a file into the editor doesn't seem to work - the link is there when you save the note but the file doesn't seem to get uploaded.

In the credits he calls Evernote "slightly evil", anyone know why?

Probably because of the changes that they made to Skitch 2 - they removed loads of features (which have been slowly added back).

http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/29802-i-advise-skitch-c...

Its in my gut. For some reason I dont trust them. They have weird paid vs free rules. They control the data(You can get it out).

OpenNote is designed to be a simple alternative. You control the data. You can see the code. Your information in your control.

EverNote is not bad. However, in my gut I dont trust them.

Plus it was time for an open source third alternative.

By the way, note that if your app has a noncommercial restriction, it is no longer open source. That breaks part 1 of the definition:

http://opensource.org/osd

Also, Creative Commons explicitly states that their licenses "should not be used for software."

http://wiki.creativecommons.org/FAQ#Can_I_use_a_Creative_Com...

not as feature laden but I've been totally happy with Google Keep. On web and device. https://drive.google.com/keep/

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