About a month ago, I bought myself an old ThinkPad as a stopgap replacement computer and installed Standard Notes on it.
Since then I've played with standard notes as a note taking application.
Just to be clear, I use OneNote and Evernote to manage documents, be they scanned nineteenth century newspaper extracts, household bills, or useful web pages. On the whole I don't use them to manage working notes.
These I usually simply write up in Markdown - my markdown documents are more of an expanded dot point list rather than a complex document with embedded images and links - using an editor such as Kate and save them with a filename starting with the date and something sensible.
Probably I ought to use something a bit more structured to group documents together rather than a self documenting file structure, but then I've survived forty years on the fringes of academia working that way.
Cherrytree, about which I blogged some time ago, would be a suitable tool, especially as you can locate the .ctb file on Dropbox, OneDrive or what have you to share between machines (and incidentally provide a backup of sorts).
The only concern is that CherryTree is basically a one person project, which has long term support implications, while Standard Notes is owned by a small company and possibly a better option for long term support. Basically if you need to do due diligence on your software tools as part of a project, Standard Notes would probably come out ahead on longevity and risk.
So I had a play with Standard Notes. Out of the box it's fairly sparse, you need a subscription to unlock the clever edits, saving to OneDrive, and other nice features.
Featurewise the basic version is much of a muchness with CherryTree. Given the way I work there's effectively no difference in functionality.
The lack of a native markdown editor in the basic version isn't really a problem, as I've said I usually type up my drafts in an editor to create a file a little like this wiki example. As Markdown is fundamentally a text file it's easy enough to cut and paste the markdown text into the standard notes application to make a new text note.
For me, as the idea of using markdown is to improve readability (basically all I use is indenting and section titling) pasting the fie as a text file works fine. If you do some clever things in your note taking, this probably won't work for you.
So, it's a competent product. Out of the box it has some restrictions and limitations, and if you want a full featured note management application, you might want to look elsewhere. As an application for managing working notes in text format it's fine. It does everything that you would expect.
And, unlike its big brothers, it's available for linux.
I would however like to have a 'try before you buy' evaluation mode for the various extensions to be able to explore its capabilities more fully.
But, if you need a competent note taker and management application for text based notes, standard notes might well do the job, especially if you are a linux user ...
Since then I've played with standard notes as a note taking application.
Just to be clear, I use OneNote and Evernote to manage documents, be they scanned nineteenth century newspaper extracts, household bills, or useful web pages. On the whole I don't use them to manage working notes.
These I usually simply write up in Markdown - my markdown documents are more of an expanded dot point list rather than a complex document with embedded images and links - using an editor such as Kate and save them with a filename starting with the date and something sensible.
Probably I ought to use something a bit more structured to group documents together rather than a self documenting file structure, but then I've survived forty years on the fringes of academia working that way.
Cherrytree, about which I blogged some time ago, would be a suitable tool, especially as you can locate the .ctb file on Dropbox, OneDrive or what have you to share between machines (and incidentally provide a backup of sorts).
The only concern is that CherryTree is basically a one person project, which has long term support implications, while Standard Notes is owned by a small company and possibly a better option for long term support. Basically if you need to do due diligence on your software tools as part of a project, Standard Notes would probably come out ahead on longevity and risk.
So I had a play with Standard Notes. Out of the box it's fairly sparse, you need a subscription to unlock the clever edits, saving to OneDrive, and other nice features.
Featurewise the basic version is much of a muchness with CherryTree. Given the way I work there's effectively no difference in functionality.
The lack of a native markdown editor in the basic version isn't really a problem, as I've said I usually type up my drafts in an editor to create a file a little like this wiki example. As Markdown is fundamentally a text file it's easy enough to cut and paste the markdown text into the standard notes application to make a new text note.
For me, as the idea of using markdown is to improve readability (basically all I use is indenting and section titling) pasting the fie as a text file works fine. If you do some clever things in your note taking, this probably won't work for you.
So, it's a competent product. Out of the box it has some restrictions and limitations, and if you want a full featured note management application, you might want to look elsewhere. As an application for managing working notes in text format it's fine. It does everything that you would expect.
And, unlike its big brothers, it's available for linux.
I would however like to have a 'try before you buy' evaluation mode for the various extensions to be able to explore its capabilities more fully.
But, if you need a competent note taker and management application for text based notes, standard notes might well do the job, especially if you are a linux user ...
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