Magpie – Git-backed Evernote replacement | Hacker News Reader

Magpie – Git-backed Evernote replacement

magpie-notes.readthedocs.org

101 pointscharlesthomas39 comments

I use GitHub's gollum [1] git-based markdown-supporting Wiki for pretty much this. It's easy to add a basic username / password protection. I run it on a Digital Ocean instance that had some capacity left over and have a cronjob push to a private bitbucket repo every 30 minutes for backup. I don't have to create notebooks and can use GitHub-flavored markdown (or other any syntax gollum supports).

That said, I like basic idea of extending magpie with a PDF scraper and email. Maybe it would spare some energy to fork gollum and add extension to it to make it more Evernote-like?

[1]: https://github.com/gollum/gollum

Is your code for adding auth public? I would love to have the same setup

See here for Basic Auth: http://stackoverflow.com/a/13357591/633167

Oh, and nicely wrapped in Fluid [1] as a site-specific browser with a nice icon [2].

[1]: http://fluidapp.com [2]: https://www.iconfinder.com/icons/71619/book_moleskine_notes_...

If you like a native app (OSX, iOS and Windows), take a look at http://www.notebooksapp.com

It's very clean, allows markdown, and the best feature is that it keeps your content as files on disk, so even if you stop using the app, you still got your content (not hidden away in a database). Plus you can easily use dropbox, rsync or whatever to sync it. It's a really great app.

This looks great. I've been looking for an offline alternative to Evernote for a while now. Are there any other decent Mac apps I should consider?

I used NoteSuite before, but wasn't too happy with it. It's UI is quirky, tries too hard and gets mostly in your way. Notebooks doesn't fall into that trap. I'm not aware of others but my research into it wasn't that exhaustive, so if there are other decent OS X apps I'd love to hear about it too.

I mostly use Evernote for clipping webpages for later reference (images, pdfs etc). I still haven't found quite an easy to use replacement. Most of the evernote replacements seem to concentrate only on text/lists.

Ever tried Dragdis?

Dragdis looks amazing, but do you know of any offline alternative? I don't trust anything that lives purely online anymore.

Cool project, looks fun.

Just a note, any 'Evernote' replacement that uses any sort of markdown or markup language is not a true replacement, but an 'Evernote inspired' project. Most people don't want to learn markup languages. Rich text editors are the well established norm and any true Evernote replacement needs to have one.

It would be lovely to have this running on top of Camlistore, rather than git. A little more automatic, linkable, etc.

I'm not familiar with Camlistore, I'll have to check it out. Thanks for the suggestion.

> I love Evernote, but I no longer trust my data to cloud providers.

Give https://turtl.it a shot as well. Aims to solve this very problem: Evernote with data privacy. (Disclaimer, I built it. Disclaimer2: not nearly as advanced as Evernote).

That said, Magpie looks really cool.

So, the Magpie creator no longer trusts cloud providers, yet the software stores data on github. You know that record scratch sound? I think I just heard that.

Yes, I know one could configure one's own github repo and make it accessible, etc. I know that cloud storage is about as reliable as that shaky cousin who's always borrowing "a few bucks for beer, man."

It seems like everyone is attacking the wrong problem. The problem is not the client, that's just a UI/UX issue that's never going to be resolved because, hey, I hate what you like and vice-versa.

Can someone please create a more reliable back-end so we can stop saying things like "I hate cloud providers"? I hate them, too, but I'm not going to redesign the part where the problem ain't.

It's backed by a git repo. I didn't read anywhere on there that it stores the repo on github.

just a small question here but essentially it would only a local repo? i don't know too much about git but if you don't store it on the cloud, how would you transfer it from computer A to B? (using a repo and not copying folders over)

You can host the repo on any accessible server. Github is an option, but so it a VPS under your control and not open to the public.

Magpie source is hosted on Github, because it's open source - it's public. There is no requirement that the git repo you use to store your data be on Github. The git repo for Magpie and the git repo for the data you access through Magpie are not intended to be the same.

I think you missed the part where Magpie can put its repo anywhere, (even on your local machine). But to your point about 'fixing the problem', that problem is already addressed, but not packaged particularly well.

There are already enough 'cloud' providers to provide the necessary diversity, and there is already enough crypto to provide the necessary security. What there isn't is an adapter layer that puts those two together in a way that lets folks like the Author build their favorite UI on top of it.

One such architecture might be a git server on a machine at one's home, which uses fuse to create a replicated secure backend across S3, some VPS, Dropbox, and what ever. Giving the git server on the machine a 'file system view' while creating a replicated and encrypted block back end using a variety of cloud providers.

You could do that with a VPS in the cloud as well, but it has some exposure to infrastructure seizure or damage. By hosting it at 'home' you trade some slightly stronger legal protections for the limitations of your home internet connection.

The problem is the client. With a client that does proper encryption, you could store your data on one of the huge TV screens in Times Square and have complete privacy.

A server should just be a dumb, transparent container. Whether it's Github or some custom-made "super secure" server doesn't matter. The real magic happens in the client.

the problem is where should the client store encryption keys?if one has multiple client on multiple devices,how one does manage all of them?(that's just a question,thanks).

A key generated from a username/passphrase will work fine. Generally you'd use a key derivation function (eg PBKDF2) which turns your auth information into a 32-byte (256 bit) cryptographic "master key." Assuming you can remember your passphrase, then you can easily re-generate your key when you "log in" from any machine.

The paragraph "What isn’t magpie?" clearly lists why magpie is NOT an Evernote replacement, yet on the top of the page it says "Git-backed Evernote replacement".

Stop using the word 'replacement' when in actuality you mean 'clone (wip)'

It doesn't resolve your fear of cloud providers, but Simplenote (http://simplenote.com/) is an awesome, simple Evernote replacer. Especially is you trust the folks at Automattic!

Simplenote seem to have abandoned Markdown, as it is only arbitrarily implemented in the web app. This makes it less compelling for me.

I use simplenote religiously and the new apps are great, but it's not really a replacement for evernote.

What, do they finally have a real Android app?

Simplenote looks great. Any idea how they make money? On their front page, it says "Backups, syncing, sharing — it’s all completely free."

It started as Simplenote, but was acquired (methinks) by Automattic (WordPress) at some point, and the underlying tech was turned into https://simperium.com

Be careful with the demo! I noticed somebody creating "notes" w/ XSS (albeit just an alert) while I was playing with it.

Definitely. I just embedded autoplaying youtube videos: <iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/3KANI2dpXLw?autoplay=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

http://magpie.sknkwrks.net/kjhkjh/hkjhkjhk

Seems "Magpie" is a common name for Git-related projects: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7378345

I'd love some screenshots in the docs.

I could not find a demo. It would help a lot if there was a working demo.

That's a really great idea. I'll have to work on setting that up.

edit: here is a demo: http://magpie.sknkwrks.net/

I was editing the note about "farts" trying to add a list of foods that cause excessive flatulence (to test markdown support of lists, of course), but after submitting my edit, I was getting 503 errors for a short period of time.

after a few more minutes, things seem fine

edit: it seems that someone was able to remove my hard work and valuable information. Given that this is based on git, is there any way to revert or view previous versions of notes?

This post is getting more traction than I anticipated, and Magpie was not intended to have more than one user at a time.

By the way, it looks there's a security issue - it's possible to search and view all the notes without being logged in.

Edit: also it's listing all the files in the .git folder. I guess it should be excluded from the searches.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com