Requirements

Data should be easily updatable (this is the input) & easily accessible (this is the output). Currently, my notes are stored on a GitHub repo. That means:

Easily Accessible

This can be broken into 2 scenarios, depending on sensitivity of data.

Insensible notes should be searchable online

To have them easily accessible, I want them to be full-text-indexed and searchable.

• I want the insensitive data to be searchable online, so that I can have access to my notes without access to my computers.

  • Existing solutions: Are there any? What are they? How good are they?

    • GitBook (Figure 1)

      • pros:

        • Has URL form -- e.g. https://tslmy.gitbook.io/k/?q=typora would give you search results in my Wiki with the keyword "typora".

      • cons:

        • Search is dynamically loaded -- slow to render.

        • An online service -- does not work offline.

    • GitHub (Figure 2)

      • pros:

        • Has URL form -- e.g. https://github.com/tslmy/know/search?q=typora&unscoped_q=typora would give you search results in my Wiki with the keyword "typora".

        • Statistically loaded -- renders faster than GitBook.

      • cons:

        • An online service -- does not work offline.

​

Sensitive data to be kept offline and still searchable

• Existing solutions: Are there any? What are they? How good are they?

  • OneNote / EverNote / Notability

    • pros

      • robust functionalities

    • cons

      • walled gardens

  • macOS Spotlight

    • pros

      • really easy access -- integrated with the OS

    • cons

      • does not support notes in walled gardens (not even Zotero references)

      • not portable -- different OSes offer incoherent experiences. This actually resembles the "walled garden" critique from the previous option.

  • command-line tools

    • resources

      • features comparison of several CLI regexp search tools: here​

      • speed comparison of ~~~~: here​

    • Looks like the best choice is ripgrep .

      • Need to do:

        • auto-exporting data from all sources to plain text and save locally.

      • pros

      • cons

Easily Updatable

The best option for now I've found is GitBook. It's got a decent webUI editor (although it has a list of quirks -- see below -- and is slow on an old computer), syncs to your GitHub, and its syntax is interoperable with Markdown.

List of quirks of GitBook:

• aggressive undoing

• when you copy something from a list and paste it somewhere else, the whole list indention builds up again. e.g., if you copied some text from a 3rd-level nested list and past it on a 2nd, you will get a 5th-level result.

TODO: This section needs expansion.

Solutions

Stick with GitBook for adding & updating public notes. TODO:

• Find a way to auto-update local copy of GitBook notes.

• Validate that I can conveniently search locally all my notes (that means private notes as local md files + public notes from GitBook) with ripgrep.

• Add a custom search engine to my Chrome that searches the GitHub repo directly.

(Deprecated) How Notes & Writings Can Be Categorized

• N/A means "not my own work, thus does not apply."

• Numbers are on a 7-point scale.

How I Allocate Apps to Different Note-taking Purposes

Crossed-outs are what I used to use but moved away from (due to death of product, etc.).

Note-taking and Storage

• Course notes / meeting notes that better be hand-drawn: Notability (iPad)

• Diary, personal journal: Day One OneNote

• Course reviews and summaries: Evernote Notability, course-specific folders, and -- in cases that the notes may be shared -- my academic website.

• Scribbles, jots, etc.: A folder full of plain text/markdown files.

  • Synced with Simplenote Dropbox.

  • Read with Notational Velocity, nvALT fsNotes.

Editors and Word Processors

• Coding/writing temporarily - Sublime Text

• Quickly generating PDFs from Markdown - Mou Typora

• Academic writing (essay, things with a formula/equation, etc.) - LyX

• For language-checking - Hemingway Editor + SlickWrite

• Mind-mapping - MindNode

• (Math stuff excluded)

• (Office suites excluded)

• (Reminder and Calendar excluded)

• (Rare-format editors excluded)

Cloud Storages

• Mobile Syncing - Dropbox

• Google Office - Google Drive

• Microsoft Office - OneDrive

• Backup - Box