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Good journal program?
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Posted by Tom Nantais
Jan 1, 2008 at 12:09 PM
Hi everybody,
I haven’t been on for a while—every time I come, I think I should be here more. Great information.
I was wondering if anyone knows of a good journal program for Windows. I’m looking for something really simple with a couple of must-have features: automatic time stamping, a tag field for each journal entry, a tag filter with a full set of boolean operators, a grid control that can show entries sorted reverse chronologically, free-form text search, and an open file format. It would also be nice to be able to group tags into categories. Does such a thing exist?
Thanks very much for any recommendations.
Tom
Posted by Tom Nantais
Jan 1, 2008 at 02:53 PM
P.S. The text of the journal entries need to be presented in one view, with a separator between each entry and a scrollbar that takes you from top to bottom of the entire collection of entries that match the current tag filter expression (if a filter is active).
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Jan 1, 2008 at 03:04 PM
Tom,
I don’t think you should restrict yourself to just journaling programs. You may find that the application that best suits your needs is a fuller information processor. I can’t say if any of the following recommendations have all the features you’re looking for, but I would suggest you investigate them:
The Journal (http://www.davidrm.com) allows you to tag sections of text within any entry as topics.
Debrief (http://www.debriefnotes.com) is a full Information Management suite, but could easily be used for simple journaling.
Evernote (http://www.evernote.com) could be used very successfully for journaling.
MyInfo (http://www.milenix.com/) may actually come closest to meeting all your needs as it allows tagging and a tabular interface where you can sort by any of the columns.
I hope this is helpful.
Happy New Year!
Steve Z.
Posted by Bob Mackreth
Jan 1, 2008 at 04:58 PM
Tom Nantais wrote:
>I was wondering if anyone knows of a good journal
>program for Windows. I’m looking for something really simple with a couple of
>must-have features: automatic time stamping, a tag field for each journal entry, a
>tag filter with a full set of boolean operators, a grid control that can show entries
>sorted reverse chronologically, free-form text search, and an open file format. It
>would also be nice to be able to group tags into categories. Does such a thing
>exist?
Interesting that you should ask this right now- I’m wrestling with the same question myself. I don’t know of anything that meets all of your criteria, but I’m sure there are others who know far more than I do, and I will be watching this thread closely.
I’ve been using ECCO to keep my journal for years, but have finally felt the urge to look for something more up-to-date. Having recently decided, despite some misgivings, to migrate day-to-day PIM operations to Outlook 2007, I’m looking for something that integrates more closely with Outlook.
Some thoughts-
Essential PIM has a very nice Notes function that would make a dandy journal.
“The Journal” looks like a very interesting piece of software, but it appears to be more elaborate for my purposes.
Right now I’ve narrowed my own choices down to either MyInfo or Evernote.
MyInfo is a great Swiss Army Knife sort of info manager, and could certainly be employed very effectively for a journal. You’d have all the tagging and search capability you could ask for. I use it for dozens of other functions, so why not one more? The downside is that MyInfo is slow to open and to save, giving it a somewhat unwieldy feeling that’s not conducive to jotting down quick thoughts. Also, as a 2-pane outliner, you can only look at one entry at a time. I’m used to quickly scanning down the page in ECCO, and hate to give up that convenience.
I’m not a huge Evernote fan overall, because I find its “tape roll” design limiting, and the general interface way too quirky and inconvenient to use. However, it is a powerful program, and a journal is one task where the toilet paper paradigm actually does seem to make sense. Throw in its excellent categorization capability, and I think Evernote has real potential for my purposes.
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Jan 1, 2008 at 05:16 PM
Bob Mackreth wrote:
>
>The downside is that MyInfo is slow to open and to save, giving it a somewhat
>unwieldy feeling that’s not conducive to jotting down quick thoughts. Also, as a
>2-pane outliner, you can only look at one entry at a time. I’m used to quickly scanning
>down the page in ECCO, and hate to give up that convenience.
You really should take another look at Debrief. You make your entries in individual notes, but can view them in a concatenated window.
Steve Z.