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A ramble about various note-taking applications
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Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Jun 17, 2023 at 10:35 AM
That’s a very interesting video. It’s the first time I really understood how Jerry uses TheBrain. I’d like to use Tinderbox, but it only works on Macs, and I do most of the kinds of computing I’d use TB for on my Windows PC. That’s one of the things I admire about TheBrain—how much effort they’ve put into making it work flawlessly on Macs and PCs, and now with the web version it works much better on iOS devices (and, I imagine, on Android).
Amontillado wrote:
This thread and a Tinderbox Meetup video discussing Tinderbox and
>TheBrain - https://youtu.be/48sTpZ_u6lE - has me revisiting old choices
>in software.
>
>Generally, such thoughts rarely come to mind, often only a couple of
>times in a whole day of writing.
>
>I installed TheBrain yesterday and thought seriously about paying for a
>registration. Today, I’m starting to remember how much utility I get
>from Devonthink.
>
>Not shiny. Not pretty.
>
>Strong, though.
>
Posted by Dormouse
Jun 19, 2023 at 02:37 PM
With all the praise for TheBrain, I thought I’d try it again. Uninstalled it in less than five minutes. No decent dark mode, antiquated interface.
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Jun 19, 2023 at 04:16 PM
Everyone is entitled to use the apps that give them the preferences they prefer, so this isn’t intended as a criticism of you, but for me, those issues with TheBrain are trivial compared to all the things it does well.
Dormouse wrote:
With all the praise for TheBrain, I thought I’d try it again.
>Uninstalled it in less than five minutes. No decent dark mode,
>antiquated interface.
Posted by Amontillado
Jun 19, 2023 at 07:10 PM
I uninstalled TheBrain as well, but not without some appreciation and with some ideas how to get more out of Devonthink.
Every document - group, smart group, tag, anything - has an annotation which is like a Markdown or RTF document joined at the hip to the main document.
I’ve never made much use of annotations. Now, I realize I’ve missed some opportunities.
Back in my youth, I did a lot with a misunderstood and now mostly extinct language called Forth. (Long parental pride dialog redacted here….)
Anyway, really primitive bare-bones Forth text editors supported a concept called a shadow screen. You had your main editing screen (1 kilobyte block) and then you had a shadow block - a second one kilobyte block where you could put whatever notes you wanted to.
Annotations in Devonthink aren’t so different from those shadow screens in Forth from 1970.
I’ve started using them extensively. Logging the evolutions a file goes through is an obvious thing.
I also like the idea of a bulleted list of links. Maybe one major bullet would be called Jump thoughts, out of homage to TheBrain, with a list of general associations. Another major bullet could be Citations.
The tiny annotations window in the Devonthink inspector isn’t much fun to use, but control-option-command-O will open it in a separate window with all the room you need.
And, son of a gun, Devonthink’s little-used see-also inspector will follow those annotation links bidirectionally. The see-also feature is often cited as something of no use. I think it’s awesome, but you have to feed it.
TheBrain is fast and easy to use. Devonthink is more flexible. I’m pretty happy with my new annotation workflows right now. I don’t anticipate looking for alternatives until at least mid-afternoon.
Posted by MadaboutDana
Jun 20, 2023 at 07:41 AM
Yep, I know that feeling… ;-)
Mind you, Obsidian’s plugins give any CRIMPer worthy of their salt a wonderful excuse to stay with a single app – because you can always experiment with all the plugins! Some of them work together, others don’t; it’s wonderful fun!! And then, of course, they get updated, so suddenly start working together again after all!!! Ahahahahahahaha!!!!! (whoops, well into Terry Pratchett’s definition of “mad as a spoon” there…)
>TheBrain is fast and easy to use. Devonthink is more flexible. I’m
>pretty happy with my new annotation workflows right now. I don’t
>anticipate looking for alternatives until at least mid-afternoon.