Forum Posts Feed
Software Recommendation (Onenote vs. Others)
< Next Topic | Back to topic list | Previous Topic >
Posted by PIMUsee
Oct 10, 2012 at 06:55 PM
Disclosure: Below is a long read due to me having given a lot of thought to how I want my system to work.
A little background to my problem. I’m currently an undergrad student who’s in their sophomore years. I have begun to recently dive deeper into scientific literature (mainly to do with neuroscience and behavior) and am taking notes. I have a system I use to gather info and then read and analyze what I have gathered and I consider this system to suit my need. But when it comes to the note-taking part I have yet to find something that does work. The needs I have are for some rudimentary formatting (bullet and number list with multi-indent capabilities), images are a must (I include figures from papers in my notes, or make concept maps or diagrams to further my understanding). I also really want the ability to export my notes easily in case the software I ever work with is shut down for some reason and I need to move my data into another one. The last needed capability is the “anytime, anywhere” functionality where I can access it form any computer or device (like my iPad) and edit the info. Extra capabilities that would be appreciated is the ability to make tables or include mathematical functions, or inking.
I tried Dokuwiki which I enjoy due to the wiki linking concept. But my problem is that maintenance of this wiki is troublesome and any markup besides text formatting is incredibly complex. Considering that I encounter things where I might make tables or include mathematical functions, I struggle to do the same in Dokuwiki. Also, even just getting images into Dokuwiki can be a chore as there’s no drag and drop or copy and paste and I have to use the media manager. I also need to be able to access the internet if I want to access my notes (I have it running as a website instead of a local right now since I want to be able to access it on my desktop, iPad, and school computers). Though this does have the bonus of being open-source and having a strong community and text file storage system so I know that my data would be safe in there for a while.
So the temporary solution I have come up with is Onenote. It allows me to do everything I mention in the first paragraph except for one of the most important thing….exporting features. While I could get my info out in multiple formats right now, I am concerned about how most of these formats require proprietary software to edit (like Onenote or Microsoft word) or isn’t really editable (like pdf and mht output). These formats also make it harder to import into other software unlike txt. (which Dokuwiki can do) or rtf files. Searching is also a little weak compare to others I have tired (Evernote allows tag and full text at the same time, ConnectedText has Boolean).
I have also tested Evernote (same export problems), ConnectedText (I can’t really use it on my iPad), Resophnotes/ Simplenote (no images).
So my main concern is does anybody know how to get data out of noenote into another thing easily (or at least not make it torture) or an alternate software I haven’t tried yet that does fulfill my needs. Also, if you use Onenote, I would appreciate a case study example just for reference on how I can improve my system.
Posted by Dr Andus
Oct 10, 2012 at 07:47 PM
There was a similar discussion here a while ago, though I can’t remember if OneNote was specifically discussed:
http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/3436/
Regarding CT on iPad, apparently there is a way (though I haven’t tried it):
http://takingnotenow.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/connectetext-on-ipod.html
Posted by Dr Andus
Oct 10, 2012 at 07:50 PM
If you don’t have time to read the whole thread, here is the system I came up with as a result of that discussion (but it’s mostly text based, as I don’t need to capture images all that often):
http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/3436/35
Posted by quant
Oct 10, 2012 at 08:32 PM
If you read a lot a of scietific literature, which I presume most is in pdf, I can suggest my setup:
pdf xchange viewer - allows notetaking, highlighling etc. I also use my own tags like “mystop”, “mynote: ...”, “mytodo: ...” etc to mark what has to be done, where i stopped reading, etc
archivarius, dtsearch or similar for quick finding of what you need to find in 100s of articles/books + your own tags
a pdf comment collector - tool to collect your pdf notes into one doc - this is tool i helped to develop, i use it to go quickly over my notes in pdf files. I also use colour coding, the initial notes are yellow, those processes and stored in Ultra Recall are grey - easy to go through them by colour in pdf exchange viewer
Ultra Recall - to store all my important notes, pictures (in my case math formulas) etc, it’s all indexed so fast to find what i need
ps: the above setup helped me to get a phd in math, and i still use it on a daily basis in my job
Posted by MadaboutDana
Oct 11, 2012 at 12:12 PM
In fact, tags do still exist in OneNote, although they appear to have been deprecated. I use them myself (you can customise the ribbon and insert various tag-related commands into any tab you like; you’ll have to create a “custom group” first - oh, and it’s worth mentioning I’m using OneNote 2010: earlier versions can’t be customised as easily). This adds some flexibility to OneNote, although you won’t necessarily find it carries over to any mobile versions you use (I also use iOS and Android versions of OneNote, both Microsoft’s and other clients such as MobileNoter and Outline+).
But you may be amused to hear that you can copy and paste OneNote pages into MyInfo very easily - tables are copied over in usable form, a few less significant things (e.g. checkboxes) are lost. MyInfo is a whole lot more useful for search operations than OneNote is! Mind you, you might then quite reasonably ask: why not simply use MyInfo instead?
I like Quant’s suggestion of using a powerful PDF editor (like PDF Xchange Viewer, which is amazingly good). This would also allow you to manage your OneNote data on a mobile device: the number of high-quality PDF editors/viewers available on iOS, for example, is really quite spectacular, and many of them (e.g. iAnnotate, PDF Expert Pro) allow you to insert/delete pages, write notes into the file, highlight/draw etc. and even change text (depending on permissions etc.). So you can export a whole bunch of OneNote material into PDF format, then play around with it in a suitable editor. Again, the search options in various PDF viewers (not least Acrobat Reader) are generally superior to OneNote itself.
PDF is a very useful format for gathering/analysing info, even if it’s generally regarded as less flexible. It’s very robust, comments/annotations can be exported, you can read it on more or less any platform. You can copy text out of it. Really not to be underestimated, even though most of us instinctively prefer “low-end” alternatives such as raw text!