The maker of Journler has released an alpha version of his new program called "South Lake" (for Mac):

http://journler.com/2016/07/08/alpha/

More info and screenshot:

http://journler.com/2016/03/06/south-lake/

I have not tried the new program yet but thought it might be of interest given previous interest in Journler.

Thanks for the notice. I used Journler for quite a while until this author abruptly quit supporting it. Since he clearly has grave doubts about every aspect of South Lake and his own motivation, I wonder why he's even bothering.

Thanks, Lucas, interesting.

There's a superb essay by somebody called "Nathan" in the comments on the front page (http://journler.com/2016/07/08/alpha/ detailing a whole range of information management considerations - the guy's done a lot of research/looking around, and has some interesting insights. I never joined the Journler fan club, so don't have the same buy-in as those who clearly did, but the things it's trying to tackle are not dissimilar to a range of other tools out there (notably ConnectedText).

Worth a look, even if only to read the essay by Nathan!

Cheers,
Bill

Oh, and in the comments I find that Andreas Eschbach is a Journler user! I don't know if it's THE Andreas Eschbach, who's one of the best German sci-fi writers around, but it might be!

How exciting!

MadaboutDana wrote:

Oh, and in the comments I find that Andreas Eschbach is a Journler user!
I don't know if it's THE Andreas Eschbach, who's one of the best German
sci-fi writers around, but it might be!

How exciting!

Andreas is also a Scrivener (and Papyrus Autor) user. And if I recall correctly, he mentioned using Journler some years agon on the Scrivener forum.

Ha, I'd forgotten about Papyrus Autor! I've been nagging the developers to produce an English version for many years. I see they're still valiantly trying to get something English out by the end of this year.

It's an amazing program. More info (for English readers) here: http://www.rom-logicware.com

German readers can download trials etc. here: https://www.papyrus.de

Cheers,
Bill

Philip Dow is an inspired developer, except that he seems unable to follow through on the promise of his apps. I wrote a review of a little notebook app he developed post Journler called Per Se. You can find it here if you're interested:

http://mac.appstorm.net/reviews/productivity-review/per-se-makes-writing-your-journal-fun/

I don't believe Per Se was updated again after I wrote that review. So I wouldn't hold my breath awaiting South Lake... though I hope I'm wrong. Sounds like a worthwhile project.

Steve Z.

What I found especially weird is that he intends to have a truly cross-platform product and then writes the first version in Swift? That crazy. Something like Electron (Atom Shell) would make a lot more sense.

But the biggest problem is that there is not much money to be made as a indie developer. Most people want free software and are not willing to pay (or donate in the case of free software).

However, I recently commited to a combination of Zotero, Notezilla, SublimeText and ConnectedText, so I'm out of the game anyway (I hope).

faustisch wrote:

However, I recently commited to a combination of Zotero, Notezilla,
SublimeText and ConnectedText

It's a bit off topic, but would you mind sharing how you're combining those? Did you manage to make them integrate or interact somehow or are you just combining them in a workflow?

Dr Andus wrote:

faustisch wrote:
>However, I recently commited to a combination of Zotero, Notezilla,
>SublimeText and ConnectedText

It's a bit off topic, but would you mind sharing how you're combining
those? Did you manage to make them integrate or interact somehow or are
you just combining them in a workflow?

Just combining them. ConnectedText is the core as the Knowledge Base, Notezilla for quick notes and project management, Zotero and SublimeText are really interchangeable, though. I'm not set on them, I might be going with Writemonkey and some other reference manager. And I forgot to mention Anki for knowledge that I try to remember (keep in my brain instead of ConnectedText.

I try not to link anything between the programs so the workflow doesn't break. And I think it would be mostly clutter, for example to link between a note in CT and a position in a PDF. I just want to get the information in CT and then never look at the source again.

So I guess you are disappointed now, I can't code, so I wouldn't know how to integrate them. But I probably wouldn't do it anyway. Those things tend to break... A lot of the automation and Artificial Intelligence that many people wish for would probably have negative effects on our brain, I think.

What I have in mind is to run all those programs from a USB stick. Then I can go to the library without my laptop and just plug the stick in, currently I have to carry it around.

faustisch wrote:

I try not to link anything between the programs so the workflow doesn't
break.

Thanks for that.

So I guess you are disappointed now, I can't code, so I wouldn't know
how to integrate them.

No, not at all. I was only wondering if you used some linking between them, especially between Zotero and CT. I also just use URL links between CT and WorkFlowy and Surfulater to link data.

What I have in mind is to run all those programs from a USB stick. Then
I can go to the library without my laptop and just plug the stick in,
currently I have to carry it around.

An alternative might be a light portable Chromebook such as the Asus Flip, and then you can use Chrome Remote Desktop to connect to your heavy laptop at home, as and when you need it.

Maybe you could also answer a quick question about the best practice to use citations in CT (I tried to register for the forums about a week ago but a moderator still has to approve me...).

I basically try to make CT my self-contained knowledge base, which means that bibliographical information should be included. The external reference manager -- Zotero or anything else (I also have licenses for Citavi and Endnote through my university) -- is just for PDF organization and formatting in final documents (.rtf or .docx).

I currently do it via categories like this: I write my note and add the citation in plain text in american format like one would in a journal article. So I would write some text and then go (Luhmann 1997: 33). Then I add the citation as a category [[$CATEGORY: Luhmann 1997]] and store the formatted full reference in it, This then also contains links to all the individual notes from the same text. I then make that Category a subcategory of [[$CATEGORY: Bibliography]] which gives me access to all text I have notes on in alphabetical order.

Is there a better way to do this? I have only used the basic features of CT so far.

I guess I could also add the files to the respective category, this would also make Zotero obsolete (except for place-holders formatting documents, which doesn't save much time anyway -- in my opinion). But that could also negatively effect performance I guess when I reach a couple thousand of PDFs. It might be better to seperate your own thoughts and excerpts from the source material anyway, like Luhmann did.

faustisch wrote:

I currently do it via categories like this: I write my note and add the
citation in plain text in american format like one would in a journal
article. So I would write some text and then go (Luhmann 1997: 33). Then
I add the citation as a category [[$CATEGORY: Luhmann 1997]] and store
the formatted full reference in it, This then also contains links to all
the individual notes from the same text. I then make that Category a
subcategory of [[$CATEGORY: Bibliography]] which gives me access to all
text I have notes on in alphabetical order.

Is there a better way to do this? I have only used the basic features of
CT so far.

That sounds like a reasonable system. What do you do though if you have multiple quotations from the same publication? Do you keep adding them to the same category page? I could see that becoming an issue, if there are too many quotes per publication.

I don't add text to category topics as I prefer to have a clear distinction between topics (containers of text) and categories (I have some Python scripts that are based around that distinction).

As for my system, I've converted to the Luhmannite Zettelkasten principle of one bite-sized note per idea or quote. I don't use CT for actual writing (it's a notes database and a project manager for me), so I don't have a need to use it as a cite-as-you-write reference manager.

Perhaps let's continue the discussion on the CT forum, once you get approved, as all this is getting a bit too technical and OT here.

Journler was my first PIM when I moved to the Mac and I loved it. It was a shame that the developer dropped it as it was well-designed.

Phil Dow reminds me a little of Jesse Grosjean of TaskPaper, another program that I love. Great software, but doesn't always stay with one thing. Both programs are fantastic, but at this point I am looking for more stability in a product/company. I use TaskPaper 3 because I know the plain text format should always be around and I can change programs easily. Journler may or may not be proprietary.

If it looked promising I would probably try it to satisfy my curiosity and support indie developers, but I doubt it would be a long-term solution. I do wish him the best of luck.


Stephen Zeoli wrote:

Philip Dow is an inspired developer, except that he seems unable to
follow through on the promise of his apps. I wrote a review of a little
notebook app he developed post Journler called Per Se. You can find it
here if you're interested:

http://mac.appstorm.net/reviews/productivity-review/per-se-makes-writing-your-journal-fun/

I don't believe Per Se was updated again after I wrote that review. So I
wouldn't hold my breath awaiting South Lake... though I hope I'm wrong.
Sounds like a worthwhile project.

Steve Z.

For those of you who didn't click over to my review of Per Se (probably all of you), the one feature of that app that I really admired was that when you filled a page in the notebook, your cursor would hope over to the next page. No long, scrolling documents in a "page." I think that's the only notebook-type app that I ever tried that did that. Just FYI.

Steve Z.

Somewhat OT:

MadaboutDana wrote:

Ha, I'd forgotten about Papyrus Autor! I've been nagging the developers
to produce an English version for many years. I see they're still
valiantly trying to get something English out by the end of this year.

It's an amazing program. More info (for English readers) here:
http://www.rom-logicware.com

They announced they plan to present the new English edition at the Frankfurt book fair in October.

Franz Grieser wrote:

Somewhat OT:

MadaboutDana wrote:
>Ha, I'd forgotten about Papyrus Autor! I've been nagging the developers
>to produce an English version for many years. I see they're still
>valiantly trying to get something English out by the end of this year.
>
>It's an amazing program. More info (for English readers) here:
>http://www.rom-logicware.com

They announced they plan to present the new English edition at the
Frankfurt book fair in October.

Any idea how this compares to Scrivener? Recently used that on a major writing project and discovered how truly awesome it is when dealing with something big.

shatteredmindofbob wrote:

Any idea how this compares to Scrivener? Recently used that on a major
writing project and discovered how truly awesome it is when dealing with
something big.

Papyrus is a completely different approach - it's more like a traditional word precessor such as Word, LibreOffice Writer, Wordperfect. With a lot of writer's tools with respect to spelling, grammar and style.
Splitting an existing document into various parts and - vice versa - building a long document by combining smaller parts - that is where Scrivener shines.

Franz