NoteTab for note-taking

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Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Sep 11, 2011 at 08:33 AM

Bill, just wondering whether you had the opportunity to try out Notetab the way you were considering. I’m looking into text editors within the context of the Cyborganize workflow.

Posted by WSP
Sep 11, 2011 at 01:07 PM

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
>Bill, just wondering whether you had the opportunity to try out Notetab the way you
>were considering. I’m looking into text editors within the context of the
>Cyborganize workflow.

————————-

I am still intrigued by the possibilities of NoteTab, but I haven’t yet tried to use it for a writing project.

I like that it is plain text; it’s extremely simple; and it feels transparent and doesn’t intrude itself between me and my notes—i.e., I just use it and don’t have to think about it at all. I also find the cross-note links work very smoothly.

On the other hand, the search capabilities are primitive (no Boolean searches, just a sequential movement through all the occurrences of a word or phrase), and the outlining feature doesn’t really allow multiple levels of indentation. (I’ve tried putting “—” or “——” before some topics in the outline, but that doesn’t work terribly well.)

I suspect that for a short writing project—an article, say—NoteTab would be fine as a note-taker; but for something longer, such as a book, it doesn’t have sufficient complexity or depth. So, for the moment, I continue to use MyInfo for my serious note-taking that is supposed to lead to a longish piece of writing; I use Evernote for miscellaneous bits of random information (mostly stuff I find on the Web); and I use NoteTab for short lists (addresses, passwords, etc.) and for writing first drafts.

Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Sep 11, 2011 at 10:05 PM

Mark, thanks for the heads-up in EmEditor outline plug-in. This is powerful stuff.

Bill, you might want to try an intermediate solution like Textpad, one of the many text editors I am currently playing around with. Its advantage is a separate pane showing all open files; you can actually save the set as a workspace which I think is very convenient. Then for a large project, such as a book, each chapter could be a separate file.

I am impressed by the potential of plain text files, and this coming from someone who has used plain text in most of his writing. What I had never considered was the transparent freedom in combining programs that comes from working with this format. For example, I started today working on a text in Textroom, one of the minimalist full screen editors we’ve discussed here in the past. I then opened it in Textpad along with other related material. I included outline information via leading spaces. This in turn can be directly copied or opened by the EmEditor outline plug-in and even Brainstorm, which will recognise the levels and create the corresponding hierarchy.

In short, I can switch anytime to a more convenient environment for the task at hand, all the time without having to export/import and lose info along the way. (Brainstorm default files are not plain text, but it can write to plain text very easily).

Wow!

Posted by Steve
Sep 12, 2011 at 10:26 AM

I used Notetab for notes utilizing its outline mode. It worked well, especially if you use the scripts users created over the years. Searches are better then most text editors I’ve used plus if you want there is the “Regular Expressions” option.

I don’t use it anymore for extensive note taking. Primarily because the searches are like all the word processors or text editors I’ve tried - one result at a time. Notetab is still my text editor of choice for all other related functions. The reformatting of text or .csv files is a favorite of mine. The outline mode is used more of text storage for information what is best displayed that way.

What replaced it is AskSam and Brainstorm.

Posted by WSP
Sep 12, 2011 at 03:34 PM

Alexander, I will try to take a look at Textpad again. I hadn’t thought about it for several years. Thanks for the suggestion.

I also have done some extensive experiments with Ultra Edit as a plain-text note-taker. In general it worked very well: I was especially impressed by the quick and clever tiling of multiple files. The main weaknesses, it seemed to me, were the overpoweringly nerdy quality of the program (though you can simplify the tool bars if you wish) and the visually confusing quality of the search results box. The latter in particular stumped me: I wanted to get rid of the full paths in the search results box, but I was never able to figure out how to do that.

I suppose the other major problem with Ultra Edit is that you’re likely to end up with a zillion small files. Of course you can organize them nicely in a tree with the projects feature, but it still means you have a lot of small files floating around on your hard disk. That makes me a bit uneasy.

Bill

——————————

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
> >Bill, you might want to try an intermediate solution like Textpad, one of the
>many text editors I am currently playing around with. Its advantage is a separate pane
>showing all open files; you can actually save the set as a workspace which I think is
>very convenient. Then for a large project, such as a book, each chapter could be a
>separate file.
> >I am impressed by the potential of plain text files, and this coming
>from someone who has used plain text in most of his writing. What I had never considered
>was the transparent freedom in combining programs that comes from working with this
>format. For example, I started today working on a text in Textroom, one of the
>minimalist full screen editors we’ve discussed here in the past. I then opened it in
>Textpad along with other related material. I included outline information via
>leading spaces. This in turn can be directly copied or opened by the EmEditor outline
>plug-in and even Brainstorm, which will recognise the levels and create the
>corresponding hierarchy.
> >In short, I can switch anytime to a more convenient
>environment for the task at hand, all the time without having to export/import and
>lose info along the way. (Brainstorm default files are not plain text, but it can write
>to plain text very easily).
> >Wow!
>

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