Note-taking software

[Phoenix]

So I'm going back to school. University, to be precise. Despite my advanced age of 25 (*cue laughter*), I've decided to do a psych major and then do an education program in the hopes of teaching at the high school level. I wish I could go further, but it's just so long, so late and so expensive...

The smart thing would have been to stick with school and go to university right out of high school. But I digress...

Anyway, I've noticed there are a lot of techies on the forum, and I was hoping for a simple answer to this dilemma. I'm heading for my very first aneurism trying to find a regular, offline piece of software for an actual computer (not an app). A netbook is what I have to work with.

I don't need it to synchronize across platforms. I don't want a web service or any sort of web-dependent function. Image and video integration are useless to me. I don't need to share my notes online with others. I will not pay for features that I feel are necessary to individual use note-taking. In fact, a fully functional, free software is what I'm looking for, ideally.

So far my best result, after hours of searching, downloading, testing, etc., has been CintaNotes (ver. 2.3). It's simple, functional, lightweight, organizable, the works. Not dependent on a web service. Doesn't support graphics but I don't mind that. The simple idea is that I type much faster than I can possibly write and can edit and consolidate my notes and link them together (in a Wikipedia-esque way).

And that's the issue with CintaNotes. It comes at a freemium, and I can't put links to other notes of mine within other notes without paying, which I find ridiculous. It seems like a basic, necessary feature to me. I might as well use paper otherwise.

And so I come to you in the hopes that a few enlightening words and maybe a link or two might make my life a whole lot easier. Thank you.

[amnal]

I've seen this kind of thing referred to as a personal wiki. Wikipedia has a list of a few, in case you haven't seen them.

[emeraldemon]

What OS are you using?

I'm a computer science grad student, and I use the old-fashioned approach: plain text files in folders. It seems to serve me fine.

[Phoenix]

I've seen this kind of thing referred to as a personal wiki. Wikipedia has a list of a few, in case you haven't seen them.

Seems great. I'll try to find one that suits my needs. It does seem like the right type of program.

What OS are you using?

I'm a computer science grad student, and I use the old-fashioned approach: plain text files in folders. It seems to serve me fine.

Windows 7 Basic. Same as Win 7 but I can't customize the background. I still have tons of dumb and useless features, but they felt the need to remove what little customization Windows still allows for some reason.

And it still eats up my glorious 1Gb of RAM.

The problem with text files is that there's no interconnectivity. If you take notes about brain plasticity and forgot some information about neurons, you have to go into your folders, pull out 'neurons.txt' (or whichever extension), if the file you're looking for is actually called that. It could be part of a file named 'BrainBuildingBlocks.txt' and I'd be stumped for a while, frantically trying to figure out where I've put info about neurons.

A program that can simply make words into [url]links[/url] that bring me to a note I've made in the past is what I'm looking for. So far for text I've been using OpenOffice, but it's slow, bulky and no linking. CintaNotes also has tabs to keep track of different subjects as if you were using a binder.

Wait, that's what I need! A binder that flips itself to the right page when I double-tap a word.

[amnal]

The problem with text files is that there's no interconnectivity. If you take notes about brain plasticity and forgot some information about neurons, you have to go into your folders, pull out 'neurons.txt' (or whichever extension), if the file you're looking for is actually called that. It could be part of a file named 'BrainBuildingBlocks.txt' and I'd be stumped for a while, frantically trying to figure out where I've put info about neurons.

A program that can simply make words into [url]links[/url] that bring me to a note I've made in the past is what I'm looking for. So far for text I've been using OpenOffice, but it's slow, bulky and no linking. CintaNotes also has tabs to keep track of different subjects as if you were using a binder.

Wait, that's what I need! A binder that flips itself to the right page when I double-tap a word.

It does sound awfully like emacs' org-mode is exactly what you're after. Of course, emacs is powerful enough that just about everything sounds like a problem emacs can solve

Emacs would have more (probably much more) of a learning curve than the other applications you're looking at, but org-mode is extremely popular and powerful, including supporting all this stuff like linking as well as many more features.

[hyperpape]

Erm. So. Emacs...

[Phoenix]

How about Ermac? Sounds close enough, and he sure looks like he can handle problems.

"Flawless note-taking!!"

[billywoods]

The problem with text files is that there's no interconnectivity. If you take notes about brain plasticity and forgot some information about neurons, you have to go into your folders, pull out 'neurons.txt' (or whichever extension), if the file you're looking for is actually called that. It could be part of a file named 'BrainBuildingBlocks.txt' and I'd be stumped for a while, frantically trying to figure out where I've put info about neurons.

Then you create an index / contents page file, and use that to refer to everything else.

Better than text files, of course, would be HTML files, in which you could insert hyperlinks and diagrams. I use a LaTeX file (or several), which are prettier than HTML files, and also have automatic index / contents page creation and section numbering and so on; also, you can easily create a bibliography (fill in the appropriate blanks in the form), after which it becomes very easy to reference books and papers (type something like "\ref{jones}" to call up the bibliography entry you made earlier and stick automatic links and references in the text). The disadvantage of this extra functionality is the slight learning curve, but I'd say knowing LaTeX was worthwhile anyway. (I'd probably say knowing emacs was worthwhile if it wasn't so arduous and I'd bothered to learn it myself.)

[Shinkenjoe]

I used Lyx with the "LaTeX for Idiots" approach and was quite happy. I had problems with finer Layout-Options, though. Therefore there is a manual, but i was too lazy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LyX

[hyperpape]

Two things:

1) If you don't want to use Emacs, you might consider using Markdown or OPML with a nice text editor (I don't know much about OPML, but many people rave about it). Markdown is one of those things that almost any technologically savvy* youngster would benefit from knowing.

Since Markdown is just a simple format for writing that's designed to represent webpages (http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/index.text), you easily get hyperlinks, and you have flexibility because a Markdown is supported by a _lot_ of tools.

* Uses computers regularly as a tool for work/research/writing--anything that involves storing and presenting ideas or data. Not just programmers, sysadmins, designers, developers, etc.

2) Emacs is a big complicated system, but it actually has a reasonably gentle learning curve. There are a couple of commands you need to know to open files, switch between open buffers (documents), and access help. But you can open it up and just type--it doesn't get in your way, it just has a million extra customizations and capabilities that you'll be learning for the rest of your life.

I spent several years as a beginning emacs user. It worked well enough for what I wanted, and I didn't spend the time to learn the depths of the system.

[Fedya]

It does sound awfully like emacs' org-mode is exactly what you're after. Of course, emacs is powerful enough that just about everything sounds like a problem emacs can solve

[phrax]

As soon as I saw emacs I felt the overwhelming urge to yell VIM! but I'll resist

There is also something called POD which is a lightweight markup language. http://perldoc.perl.org/perlpod.html

[Boidhre]

If your work has a lot of note taking on academic papers this is possibly the best solution I've come across: http://www.papersapp.com/papers/

This would be overkill for anything other than a PhD literature review though. It's designed around the idea that you need to keep track of a lot of papers, links between them and notes on them. Here's an Ars Tech review, though note it comes for both Windows and Mac now: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2011/05/pa ... ement-app/

[Phoenix]

If your work has a lot of note taking on academic papers this is possibly the best solution I've come across: ...

Thankfully I'm not there yet (and I probably don't have the time and resources to). It's simply note-taking during classes, for which speed and accuracy are my main concerns. This means typing instead of writing. Next I want to be able to cross-reference, and in-text links are the way to go.

You guys have given a lot of great suggestions. I'm testing some of them and will eventually pick one to go with. This thread has been a huge success, thank you all.

[Boidhre]

If your work has a lot of note taking on academic papers this is possibly the best solution I've come across: ...

Thankfully I'm not there yet (and I probably don't have the time and resources to). It's simply note-taking during classes, for which speed and accuracy are my main concerns. This means typing instead of writing. Next I want to be able to cross-reference, and in-text links are the way to go.

You guys have given a lot of great suggestions. I'm testing some of them and will eventually pick one to go with. This thread has been a huge success, thank you all.

To my mind being able to search throughout the notes for a specific term would trump hyperlinks. It would depend on your subject though. LaTeX of some flavour would jump immediately to mind but then I'd need something that handled mathematical equations gracefully which rules out most other note taking/writing software.

Take a look at some of the brainstorming software. It'll link to documents for you and handle links and relations on a meta level. Leaving you take notes in Notepad or whatever you like.