Ask Slashdot: Open Tools For Logbooks and Note-taking? 227
New submitter leonstr writes: I'm a sysadmin and I like to record my daily work in a logbook: technical notes, work progress, actions from meetings, etc. I started with the word processor on the venerable Psion Series 3a but for about 10 years I've been using Amaya. It's FLOSS, cross-platform and uses an open file format (XHTML). Amaya has its quirks but I really like it; unfortunately it's no longer being updated and I feel it's time to change. So I wonder: what do other people use for recording their work? What works well and meets your requirements?
Change just because? (Score:4, Insightful)
it's no longer being updated and I feel it's time to change.
This mindset is ridiculous. Why do you "feel a need to change" if it still works for you? Are you expecting remote security vulnerabilities to show up in your note-taking software?
The reasons don't matter (Score:3, Insightful)
This mindset is ridiculous. Why do you "feel a need to change" if it still works for you?
Please point out where he said that it still works for him. Obviously he feels it is not meeting his needs (whatever they are) in some way. He doesn't have to justify changing software to any of us even if there is no objective reason.
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Obviously he feels it is not meeting his needs
Amaya has its quirks but I really like it
Emphasis mine. Also note that it is present tense.
Re:The reasons don't matter (Score:5, Informative)
Liking something != meeting needs (Score:4, Informative)
Emphasis mine. Also note that it is present tense.
Emphasize away. Something can work and you can like it and it still doesn't meet your needs. For example I like GIMP and it works fine but I have photo editing needs that it simply cannot handle so I have to use Photoshop instead. I like plenty of tools that I no longer use for one reason or another. Might be lacking needed/desired features. Might be a security problem. Might be incompatible with a particular operating system. Etc.
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Yes, yes you're quite right. If the pathetic little questioner wants an answer to his question he will justify himself to us to whatever extent we feel we need. See, I'm a libertarian and it's all about the market. We have something he wants. He's going to do what we say in order to get us to give it to him. It's a simple market exchange and anyone who disagrees is a communist, a socialist, a totalitarian who wants to take away individual liberty!!!!
Sig Heil Ayn Rand!!!
Now. Questioner. DROP AND GIVE ME 20 .
No justification needed (Score:2)
He does if he wants a suggestion that better meets his needs. He didn't need to justify his decision until it became an Ask Slashdot.
The reason why he wants to change doesn't matter. What matters is what his needs are going forward. All he needs to do is to outline what his projected use case is. Help or don't but your opinion about his reasons for switching are irrelevant.
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When it comes to the tools we use to do our jobs, it can be valuable to look up from what we've always used and see what else is available. It may be that one of the competing options has a game-changing feature that fits your needs perfectly while your current solution is stagnant.
There is always a cost to switching, but everyone has their own threshold where that cost is lower than the cost of sticking with an antiquated system.
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Because there might be better tools out there.
Sticking with fire and a cave works well enough... until you realize something better awaits discovery.
I'd go with Notepad++ for simplicity and FreeMind for feature list.
Re:Change just because? (Score:4, Informative)
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But he said he liked his existing solution.
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Divorce rate is so high... is that a bad thing? Maybe it should have been high in the first place and nowadays we're reaching normal counts.
People are in debt? Good. It's a very effective way of maintaining slavery within the law. CEOs from around the world, rejoice!
Now, to answer the submitter: Notepad++.
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Wow. Just. Wow.
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That why (1) the divorce rate is so high and (2) people are in debt.
Your notetaking application is just a tool, not a lifelong commitment, or something super-expensive to replace.
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That why (1) the divorce rate is so high and (2) people are in debt.
Your notetaking application is just a tool, not a lifelong commitment, or something super-expensive to replace.
Granted. I was just making a general observation to the statement: "Sometimes we just like to use something else after doing the same thing for 10 years." as this seems to be a common thing in our modern, disposable U.S. society.
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If i had something to suggest, I'd have suggested it.
My comment reflects what I was thinking when reading the submission.
I'm sorry if it caused you tears or anger, do you need a tissue?
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EVERY effing time somebody asks something on slashdot, a smartarse like you has to come to the rescue with their stupid assumptions and questions trying to ridicule the question as invalid.
I too am looking for a note-taking software that isn't a wiki or a ms onenote. but to get to an answer, i have to read through drivel such as yours. maybe there should be a separate quota for OFFTOPIC downvoting points. e.g 100 offtopic points every day for every user.
Vi (Score:4, Insightful)
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Vim, Emacs, Notepad++, Kedit, Word, JOE, SciTE,or any other editor should do just fine.
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I agree with the initial comment that if what one has works, changing it seems strange. Red-Queen Races have no winners -- only losers. But knowing where one will go if their tool somehow actually won't do what they need done is reasonable.
Point: I'm not wild about markdown, but isn't the whole point of markdown that you don't need a special editor -- just (possibly) software to convert markdown text to a real markup language when you need formatted output.
Editors? There's a zillion of them and most are
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Vi
That's all I use, but I was really hoping to see some more interesting answers than what has been provided. This is a very common "problem", and I know my text file solution has numerous deficiencies. The saving grace for a text file + vim is my proficiency with vim and the benefits that result from that. For example, there is no way in hell that a standard html + cgi based solution would ever suffice - way too slow to make updates, change status on things, move stuff around, etc. It's possible that a very
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Use pandoc [wikipedia.org] to convert it to almost any other popular format.
Post Its (Score:2)
I only take a single Post-It note to meetings. That helps people around me prioritize. Then, once I'm done with the stuff on the Post-It, I recycle it.
(I used to take copious notes and kept them forever but that just pissed people off; there's comfort in having their thoughts from the past forgotten.)
Re:Post Its (Score:4, Insightful)
Ummmm .... tough?
My notes are my record of what happens. They're my CYA in case someone demands we do something stupid, or comes back later and tries to claim something else was agreed upon. And they're how I know what was decided and what I need to be doing.
Too bad if your good notes are a problem for someone later on who doesn't want the things they've said remembered. I'm not saying that "John said that Sally has a bad haircut" is something you write down. You're not trying to be the National Enquirer here.
But if John says he'll deliver the document to Sally, and that he agrees with your proposal ... you sure as hell record that.
Because when John tries to blame it on you later on, you flip back to your notes and say "nope, says right here". Because we're all met that particular John guy who tries to rewrite history and claim he never agreed to that.
In fact, with sales guys, and VPs and the like, I make an extra point of making sure they see I'm writing it down. Because they're the most likely to suddenly develop a case of remembering things differently than actually happened.
I'm not there to provide comfort for people who would rather people not remember what they said.
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I knew a guy who worked for one of our suppliers. He used to produce notes to back up things that would have made him look bad. We quickly realised that his notes were bullshit, and didn't match our email archives.
To cover your arse, send email.
Re:Post Its (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why grownups who have meetings have someone send meeting minutes.
Specifically because there are far too many assholes in the world to not take steps to a) cover your ass, and b) hold people accountable.
I've lost track of the times that 2-3 people all pull up the meeting notes and day "nope, you were the one who decided we wouldn't do that".
Keeping VPs from weaseling out of stuff/assigning blame later is a valuable life skill.
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WTF kind of toxic places do you people work at? The more I read this type of shit, the more it boggles my mind. How are these companies even in business?
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I went from the military to academia to owning my own company. We did have staff to take notes in meetings with clients and recorded those meetings. Orders were often written in the military. But, from the way I read their post, this was just dealing with coworkers during normal interactions, at least part of the time. Yeah, we've got a lot on our plate but we remember these things, don't lie about these things, and keep updated with these things. Meetings with clients, yeah, we recorded stuff but it was al
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I work at a university. I spend 10-20% of my time covering my ass. The alternative is to work unpaid overtime to get my ass out of trouble. A couple of weeks ago my manager accused me of something rather uncharacteristic of me. I searched my emails, found very clear evidence to refute the issue, problem solved. Happens every few weeks. Other senior researchers like to request something simple and vague, but when I deliver they suddenly remember that they asked for something very specific and different. Reco
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Holy shit... Seriously. I could not work like that. I just, a few seconds prior to you replying (it seems), replied to another user and went into some details and, honestly, I feel very fortunate. It seems, as I stated, toxic. I could not, I would not, work like that. I'm retired but I owned my own company and never, not really, had a single issue of this nature. Anything even close to that was nipped in the bud but we were small (around two hundred employees in three offices and two skeleton-crew offices).
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Old school paper ... (Score:2)
I kick it old school ... I have a stack of lab books spanning the last 20+ years.
I write the date on the page, and start taking notes.
No technology required.
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I used to do that, but the manufacturers of my notebooks stopped releasing updates (new ones).
This sounds like a joke, but I *LIKED* my 5-star notebooks with heavyweight (20 lb) paper. Most notebooks have terribly thin paper. I haven't found a replacement.
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I have a similar problem with toilet paper. The rolls nowadays are narrower than the old standard, and I have one old holder in the basement that has a wedge-it-between-the-springy-ends design that only works with the previous width. Who is the narrow-minded idiot who decided to reduce the roll width?
Problem is, I can't figure out where the hidden screws are in the old holder so I can remove and replace it. So, how's a guy supposed to pinch a roll before pinching a loaf? The whole things a pain in the a
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Problem is, I can't figure out where the hidden screws are in the old holder so I can remove and replace it.
Either find a different brand of paper, or unleash the tools of destruction.
A good pair of vice grips, hammer, crowbar, sawzall, and power drill with some hole saws and strong bits for metal drilling can unmount just about anything..
As in, most likely.... pound a wedge in behind the thing and cut the screws off.
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Thanks for the suggestions. Based on the inspiration I received here, I ended up man-handling it until it pulled out of the wall. Turns out it was only anchored into sheetrock with those expanding plastic thingies, so it wasn't that hard to just pull out. In retrospect, I should have tried that years ago, but I was looking for the subtle approach.
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They have been reducing the size of many things for the past decade or so instead of raising the price so your toilet paper is narrower, the block of cheese is 400g instead of 450g, they leave out 7mL out of every small bottle of cola, chocolate bars are smaller, etc. People would notice and complain if the prices went up but not many people notice when the size is reduced.
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Indeed. Coincidentally, I recently compared a white Three Musketeers bar that I had stashed in about 1987 to its modern silver equivalent, and the new one was both subjectively smaller to the eye, and also objectively smaller by about 20% in terms of the grams listed on the two packages.
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Thanks for the suggestions! That idea seemed very promising, so I tried it but that didn't work. I even used a hammer on it. However, eventually the whole thing pulled out from the wall. Turns out it was only anchored into sheetrock by those plastic expanding screw thingies.
After I got it off, I was able to see that the proper way to do it would have been to remove the tiny set screws on the bottom of each arm. I had never previously seen those, being so tiny and on the bottom. Regardless, after many
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Bound paper engineering books with numbered pages FTW!
I have stacks back to the 80's when I started using them. I put everything in them.
I got deposed in someone else's battle. Went in, got the "and where were you the night of June 2?" "No clue, but let me look in my book". Opened it up and read him the entry. I keep good notes, I even keep who was there in seating order (clockwise from me, I'm last in the list, people that show up late are listed after me). The defendants lawyer was very unhappy. Si
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Link or any additional information about the software? Beta? Alpha?
Emacs org mode (Score:5, Informative)
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+1 to org-mode. I'm still getting used to it (not an emacs fan) but it has nice note-taking qualities (I like my notes in a bulletted outline), some basic calendaring for logs and scheduled events, and other cool features that I haven't even begun to explore.
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Bah, my paper notebooks have native support for drawings, bullet lists, any font I choose, arbitrary orientation of text, footnotes, annotations, and all sorts of things. ;-)
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Do your paper notebooks support searching for keywords inside the articles?
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LOL ... searching, sure .. it's, uh, natively supported, but a little slow, and there aren't any APIs. ;-)
If I know approximately when something happened, I can usually find it fairly quickly.
I've known a lot of people who spend a lot of time trying to keep their digital version working, or upgrading it, or whatever. It can degrade into technology fetishism, and it becomes all about having a tool to do it. People can spent a lot of time getting their digital tools "just so", almost to the point they don't
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No. And that is a very real drawback of a notebook. I've tinkered with computerized note taking applications for that reason but have never settled on one. There is something about putting pen to paper that forces me to think about what I am writing. And that is _usually_ enough of an assist so that if I do need to search for something that I know what project it was associated with, and roughly when that was, and where that was in which notebook, etc. But I am (kinda) old. YMMV.
As an aside: I can't i
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Re: Emacs org mode (Score:2)
Org-mode is the answer. Start with basic outlining features and build from there. If there's something you want to do: a) RTFM, there's a good chance it already exists, otherwise b) contact the mailing list. They're very helpful and feature requests are picked up quickly.
Google Keep (Score:4, Interesting)
While Google Keep is cross platform, it isn't FLOSS but I still haven't found anything that matches it.
Pros:
Major cross Platform support: Windows (Chrome app), Mac (Chrome app), Linux (Chrome app), iOS, Android
Offline note taking support
Syncing across platforms
Quick
Multi media input types: Text, lists, audio, image/photo,
Reminders
Can be shared
No services to manage
Cons: :-/
Not FLOSS
No public API
May disappear because it is a good product
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Another non FLOSS service is Evernote. It is popular enough that some mobile applications use Evernote under the hood.
Another non FLOSS is MS OneNote. Some of my colleagues use it fo
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"I keep my notes short lived: money I owe .... I will not miss it much if it is gone,"
I believe that.
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OneNote is actually really good, and free as in beer. Most platforms are supported, except Linux maybe. It's my current choice.
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Re:Google Keep (Score:5, Informative)
I would similarly also suggest Microsoft's OneNote for all the same reasons. It's probably the best Microsoft product that you're not using. Since I operate in pretty much a straight up Microsoft environment, that's what I use. Keep and OneNote are both fantastic products.
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OTOH, I can understand wanting an "open" tool for this. As much as I love OneNote, it's hard to use on Linux and I do feel the "lock in". There
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The android version has literally no Undo! I tried to switch (from Evernote and/or Android Lecture Notes) but the first time I wiped something out with no undo I had to switch back.
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It helps a bit in determining which of all those notes floating in 'the clouds' are yours.
I do like the idea of all notes by all people getting dumped onto a server and syncing back to everyone. Then having to come up with creative ways to find the ones that are yours.
.
A good few years ago, people deemed wireless syncing between desktops, phones, tablets, fridges, cars, the NSA, and everything in between a good thing. To accomplish such a thing, unsurprisingly, an account of some type is required.
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If they don't keep Google Keep it would be a damn shame, from the name alone. About the same as Amazon Glacier melting your tapes.
A pen (Score:2)
Get a notepad of graph paper, and a pen.
Notebook and Pen? (Score:5, Interesting)
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It can be hard to search 10+ years of notes, to find some mention of a project or system name. If my work gave me a laptop, I'd definitely be looking for something other than pen + paper.
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As some people have pointed out, pen and paper isn't searchable unless you're very good at staying organized and filing things. Also, it's somewhat difficult to backup and archive unless you scan everything. Plus, it can end up taking up a bunch of space. It's also harder to share, if you want to share your notes for some reason.
I'm not really opposed to it. I keep notebooks. But for anything important, I usually end up transcribing it into some kind of digital form. If you're worried about your note
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You can buy Composition Notebooks by the gross, those are very popular around here. Plus they offer the integrity of not being able to remove pages if that's your cup of tea.
I heard they're incompatible with the upcoming version of Windows.
As a general rule I don't make logs, but... (Score:5, Informative)
Back when I was in support I used to open up Notepad and put .LOG on the first line. When you do that, every time you open Notepad it puts the time and date on a line for you. It was quick and easy to do that while on the phone. I'd use this to make notes regarding things that didn't really belong in the customer log, or for semi-personal work related research kinds of things. I always figured that if it mattered to me or anybody, I could hack up a quick script to parse it into some other format. It never mattered.
elog without a doubt! (Score:3)
I'm old school the way you are...
Site logs are a terrific means of communicating and they've saved my butt many times. I've used elog very, very successfully:
https://midas.psi.ch/elog/ [midas.psi.ch]
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Same question ... (Score:2)
Nothing to add after the first two posts.
They nailed it.
However I have a similar question. I'm looking for an eInk device with a touch screen, that allows pen input.
Not pen input as in handwriting, but hitting the keys of the 'virtual keyboard' with a pen (or the rubber side of an actual pencil).
File format as text would be sufficient. RTF would be a bonus but not necessary.
Any ideas? (I own a Nook and two Kobos, but they lack such text processing software, I already came to the bollocks idea to make me an
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I'm not sure about other eink devices, but the Kindle has support for "Active Content". One of those that I have installed is "Notepad":
http://www.amazon.com/Notepad/... [amazon.com]
There's lots of alternatives too, and a bunch of other "apps" (ex. there's an official Scrabble app for the kindle). Unfortunately, I haven't found a good way to find them. If you go to the above link though, there's the "Customers who bought this item also bought" section that contains others, and I'm sure there's some way to find more on t
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Nice. Perhaps I check a kindle once, was not really interested into them so far.
Thank you!
Desktop Wiki: Zim (Score:2)
If you're working with GNU/Linux, consider Zim, the desktop wiki [zim-wiki.org].
Some points for Zim:
If text is enough... (Score:2)
... then just use a simple text file. Come up with your own scheme for title, date and time and it will work.
Either as single file with search, or with multiple files and grep(1).
The only really working alternative that I've found are:
* a paper notebook. easily available when you have only one hand free because you're on the phone, and don't want to unlock an electronic device
* sending yourself notes via email, and use your favourite email client for management.
If I'd want to live in a Micro
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... then just use a simple text file. Come up with your own scheme for title, date and time and it will work. Either as single file with search, or with multiple files and grep(1).
And please make things easier on yourself by setting up commands to automate your own chosen format. I have simple commands for opening a file with today's date in the name, inserting date and time into the text of the file, generating numbered lines, and so on.
Autogenerating dates and times is particularly valuable in avoiding extremely costly mistakes.
(For me, this is aliasing "mylog" to something like emacs ~/Notes/`date +"%Y%m%d"`.txt)
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If you must change, switch to markdown. (Score:2)
If it works for you, why change?
But if you must change, I recommend using Markdown. Tons of FOSS editors out there [google.com], and it's actually simpler than HTML. And also, in a pinch, readable and editable in simple text format.
Glad I could help.
I wrote one (Score:2)
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Tiddlywiki (Score:2)
http://tiddlywiki.com/ [tiddlywiki.com]
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned it yet.
MS Word (Score:2)
OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) (Score:2)
from Wikipedia .
"OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) is an XML format for outlines (defined as "a tree, where each node contains a set of named attributes with string values" . .
"The OPML specification defines an outline as a hierarchical, ordered list of arbitrary elements. The specification is fairly open which makes it suitable for many types of list data."
I use two outliner programs: OmniOutliner and Notebook for Mac (proprietary). I've used outliners since the original More program from back in th
LaTeX (Score:2)
Plaintext means I can grep years worth of reports to query what is effectively my cyborg memory. I use hyperref to create pdf hyperlinks, images are no problem. Provenance concerns are handled by my build script which commits everything to a git repository multiple times per day. If I want to scribble stuff witho
Notecase Pro (Score:2)
I know that you asked for Open Source tools, but if others are going to propose Notepad and Microsoft products, let me mention Notecase Pro.
It comes in flavors for windows, Linux, and Mac. There are constant updates. There is a user community developing plugins. You can write in different fonts, with font colors and background colors. You can embed screenshots.
It is a hierarchical note manager. The price is reasonable, you can get a single user (any number of computers) perpetual license, or pay more and ge
Does anyone else ever use this site? (Score:3)
Just wondering if anyone else uses the alternativeto.net [alternativeto.net] site for questions like these? You can filter by platform and license type, 'vote' for applications you find particularly useful, suggest new alternatives...I don't know, I've found it useful in the past *shrugs*
FYI, here's the open source alternatives listed for Amaya on the alternativeto site for all platforms (sorry about the trail-offs in some of the descriptions, but I'm not digging down that far):
KompoZer
This application has been discontinued. "The project seems to be discontinued. Latest stable version, 0.7.10, was released on 2007 and last development version, 0.8b3, on 2010, but the program is still downloadable from the official website."
Bluefish Editor
Open Source by Olivier Sessink, Daniel Leidert | Mac, Windows, Linux
Bluefish is a powerful editor targeted towards programmers and webdesigners, with many options to write websites, scripts and programming code. Bluefish supports many programming and markup languages, and it...
BlueGriffon
Open Source | Mac, Windows, Linux
An HTML editor based on Mozilla rendering engine. Supports some CSS3 features and since recently has a built-in SVG editor.
NVU
This application has been discontinued. "Development stopped in 2005"
Quanta Plus
This application has been discontinued. "The project stopped at version 3.5.10, released on June 2, 2009. It can be still downloaded from Slax.org"
ACE (Ajax Code Editor)
Open Source | Web / Cloud
Focused and built towards coders, web designers, and web builders, ACE (Ajax Code Editor) can help users get familiar with how the coding is and it's basic structure. This web app is useful for those with...
Openbexi
Open Source by openbexi.com | Windows
OpenBEXI is a WYSIWYG HTML builder using the magic of HTML5 and CSS3 . By resizing, dragging and dropping various HTML widgets it is easy to build a web page. All texts using the DOJO editor, pictures...
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While looking through the AlternativeTo site, saw something that sounds like it might fit your needs, depending on the specifics: Laverna [laverna.cc]
AlternativeTo describes it as:
Laverna is a web application written on JavaScript. It's built to be an open source alternative to Evernote.
Laverna stores notes in indexedDB and personal settings in local storage.
## Features
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* Markdown editor based on Pagedown
* Manage your notes even if you're offline
* Secure - client side encryption with SJCL and AES algotithm.
* Synchronizing with cloud storages. At the time only with Dropbox.
* Three editing modes: distraction free, preview and normal mode
* WYSIWYG control buttons
* Syntax highlighting
* No registration required
* Web based
* Keybindings
Note: never used it, never heard of it before, just throwing it out there.
MarkDown and SimpleNote (Score:2)
I finally settled for this :
FLOSS or non-FLOSS? (Score:2)
Honestly, a lot depends on whether or not you want FLOSS or non-FLOSS, paid on non-paid etc. Not to mention how much actual work you want to put into your system.
I have two, both of which are nominally "free". The first is OneNote that I use for work. It syncs across all my devices and works really well for someone who uses a Windows tablet as I can both write notes with my stylus and draw diagrams. This functionality alone makes it a stand-out awesome system for me as typically in the kinds of meetings I d
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I use a livescribe pretty regularly: I have one in my pocket right now. While I agree the form factor of the pens is suboptimal, as are the cartridges, it does the job for me. I've only lost one so far to overzealous inspection at an airport as a spy device because it has audio recording capability. In theory that one might come back, but the office it is stored in is only open a few hours a day, a few days a week at the airport and the release documents have two names on them and... long story.
Anyway, w
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In what country was it confiscated, if you don't mind saying?
Don't give them any ideas (Score:2)
You joke now, but I'm sure this "feature" is in the works.