Ask Slashdot: Open Tools For Logbooks and Note-taking?

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 Amaya has its quirks but I really like it; unfortunately it's no longer being updated and I feel it's time to change.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?

Comments

Change just because?

[fisted]

it's no longer being updated and I feel it's time to change.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?

Re:Change just because?

[renderhead]

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.

Re:Change just because?

[war4peace]

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++.

Re:Change just because?

[leonstr]

Submitter here. It's got a crash bug I can work around to avoid and I think XHTML is a dead end. And yes, I wondered what else was about. I normally have one file per year so I thought if I was going to change for 2016, it was time to see what the options were. Thanks all for suggestions so far!

Re:Change just because?

[mysidia]

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.

Re:Change just because?

[greenfruitsalad]

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

[MagickalMyst]

Vi

Re:Vi

[LWATCDR]

Vim, Emacs, Notepad++, Kedit, Word, JOE, SciTE,or any other editor should do just fine.

Re:Vi

[leonstr]

Vim's great (and it's still actively developed). But Amaya gives me a WYSIWYG-ish layout so I can have indented bullets, quoted text, etc. I can also include images, so easier to include a screenshot or a graph (a picture paints a thousand words -- no matter how good the text editor!).

Emacs org mode

[Stephan Schulz]

Emacs org mode can do notes perfectly, comes with selective archiving, and you can even schedule tasks and even record what time you spend on what. It's free form, exports to plenty of useful formats, the table mode is plain genius, and, of course, it's Emacs.

Re:Emacs org mode

[gstoddart]

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 do the things they're keeping the notes for.

I knew someone who spent countless hours organizing his stuff on his Palm Pilot back in the day. And didn't really spend a lot of time doing the actual tasks. He did, however, have the most awesomely organized collection of digital notes imaginable. Pity he never actually delivered on his tasks. It's like he wasted all sorts of time organizing his notes and not doing the tasks. Which defeated the purpose of the notes.

I readily admit you can make backups and do all sorts of fancy things with digital versions, and that not everybody is going to fall into the trap of focusing on the tools.

Me, I've been keeping paper notes for a very long time, it's my preferred long-term solution. And if I lose those notes in a fire, I know damned well there will be things I say "I have no idea".

As long as you're not just doing digital note-keeping because it seems like a fun toy, run wild. But when you reach the point of spending more time fiddling with your notes than actually making use of them ... you've crossed the line to just wasting your damned time.

Google Keep

[Hydrian]

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 :-/

Re:Google Keep

[sanf780]

So far, Google Keep has not been abandoned yet. I am using Google Keep myself. However, I keep my notes short lived: money I owe, DVDs I lend or borrow, etc. I will not miss it much if it is gone, that is, when Google decides that such a great application with no advertising is not aligned with their goal of increasing revenue.

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 for work, because it comes with MS SharePoint 2013.

Re:Google Keep

[NewWorldDan]

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.

Re:Google Keep

[Imazalil]

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.

The reasons don't matter

[sjbe]

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.

Re:The reasons don't matter

[leonstr]

Well, if I *do* have to justify it: the latest release from 2013 is for Windows, Mac and Linux. I can't get it to compile on recent Linux distros, it won't run on new Mac OS versions, there are features I have to avoid to workaround crashes on Windows. Features that I'd like will never be added and problems I encounter will never be fixed.

A pen

[Anonymous Coward]

Get a notepad of graph paper, and a pen.

Re:Post Its

[gstoddart]

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

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.

Notebook and Pen?

[MerlynEmrys67]

Note: This solution has been available for many years and will be available for many more years without any changes. Also - there are some benefits where pen and paper (With date) is considered reliable in court - computer notes may not be because of the lack of dating and change control.

Re:Notebook and Pen?

[coldmist]

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.

As a general rule I don't make logs, but...

[istartedi]

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!

[bferrell]

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/

Re:Post Its

[MountainLogic]

Or these is the original Hipster PDA

Re:Post Its

[gstoddart]

Sorry, your notes probably don't mean shit to a VP looking to assign blame

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.

Re:Old school paper ...

[Marginal Coward]

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 ass...

Re:Post Its

[leonstr]

This! This is a key reason why I tell everyone to keep notes. There's a saying in healthcare: "If you don't write it down it didn't happen" and it applies to so many spheres. Even if your notes aren't recognised as an official record, you're most of the way to winning an argument if you've got contemporaneous notes to fall back on. Yes a VP might not accept them but other parties will quickly flounder when eyes turn to them in an awkward meeting...

Re:Post Its

[AmiMoJo]

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.

Liking something != meeting needs

[sjbe]

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.

Does anyone else ever use this site?

[CCarrot]

Just wondering if anyone else uses the 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...