A Simple Note Taking Software - Which One?

pxlpushr asks: "I am a EE major turned CS major who never got over the habit of maintaining a log book. Lately I have been obsessing over the idea of moving all my log books (yes, I have many of them: one for each Computer at home and work, and a couple for my work) to electronic form. I have searched and searched and found nothing interesting. My needs are simple: I would like HTML format so that when I am viewing I can use a browser. It it is available for both Windows and Linux systems, that would be great. I am definitely not looking for something real heavy duty like 'Go Live'. It is too heavy for quick, frequent use of jotting down notes. It should be WYSIWYG software, should allow reasonable formatting options for the text and figures (gif/jpg) I include in the notes, and should provide facility to load up a template for the log and fill in the details into the template. The closest I came across was the freeware Keynote . But two problems: it supports only the RTF, no HTML support and no Linux counterpart. So my question to Slashdot denizens is, which note taking software do you use?"

Comments

pen & paper

[sdedeo]

I tried, multiple times, to go electronic with my notebooks (I'm a grad student in astronomy.) It never panned out, mainly because paper and pen are just way more convenient and have that "scribble" factor: you can get things down without being quite sure what you're trying to say. Later, you can write things up in "proper" form (which for me is LaTeX.)

In my experience, having an additional layer between brain and note (the syntax of an electronic journal program, whether it's HTML or not) shorts out this process. (I'm reminded of the time I tried to use a tape recorder to record notes: I would just come up speechless.) Oh, and having your own clever electronic notetaking system really gets in the way when you meet your advisor and he wants to scribble herself.

But, if you don't want the benefit of my experience, here are the things I tried:

LaTeX. Easy, good looking output with simple math syntax (actually, I do something use LaTeX when I'm writing out complicated maths, instead of doing it by hand. Makes it easier to edit mistakes in a long formula.) My old college roommate does EVERYTHING in LaTeX (he's a mathematician now) -- all his notes, everything. He is also a little weird.

NoteTaker. Cute "metaphors" that seem to get in the way of actually doing anything.

omnigraffle. I thought I would use this to diagram various systems I was looking at. No go, too complicated to figure out.

In the end, I went with this. It's open source!

Re:deviate from prompt

[Carik]

Am I simply misunderstanding what he's asking for?

Yes.

I've run into this a few times, and while it doesn't piss me off the way it used to, I still find it frustrating.

While I agree that HTML isn't hard to learn, especially for what the poster was asking for (maybe 3 tags, total), it's not what he wants. He wants something like a notebook, where he can scribble down his thoughts as they come to mind, or jot down what he just did in case he needs to know later.

I tend to write my term papers in HTML, usually using vim, because my profs can't seem to agree on a format, and at least they can all read that. But, even now that I'm used to it, it breaks the flow of my thoughts to have to add a paragraph tag, or figure out how to make the thing insert a tab. Those few extra characters force you to switch your frame of reference from "written english" to "HTML code," which can slow you down and make a quick note kind of a hassle.