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Collate - cross-platform, plain text notes
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Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Apr 24, 2017 at 02:00 PM
Some of you may already have seen the preview of Collate through Lifehacker, if not some other source. But if you haven’t this notes app may be worth taking a look at. It runs on Windows, Mac or Linux… no mobile app.
Collate reputedly stores your notes in plain text locally. There is no cloud service, though they encourage you to store your notes in Dropbox or Google Drive to access them across computers.
You can create four types of notes:
- Markdown
- Rich Text
- Outline
- Web Clipper
These aren’t exactly clean plain text. Collate has a file format that they say is “optimized for human readability.” You can read more about the file format here:
https://github.com/Collateapp/CollateFileFormat/blob/master/README.md
What interests me most about Collate is the Outline note format. You can focus on sub-nodes and there is a breadcrumb trail at the top of the note. It is like creating a Workflowy style outline within your notebook.
The app costs $20 for unlimited personal use, but there is a two-week free trial.
Anyway, this seems like a genuinely useful app that might appeal to folks here.
Steve Z.
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Apr 24, 2017 at 02:02 PM
BTW, Collate wants to take advantage of dissatisfaction with Evernote. It has an Evernote importer and a built in tutorial about how to do it. I haven’t tried this, myself.
Posted by Hugh
Apr 24, 2017 at 02:20 PM
Trying it. Many thanks for the flag, Steve.
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Apr 24, 2017 at 05:57 PM
Collate still has a bunch of rough edges. The Mac version has some definite bugs—the open note in editor function does not work properly, for example. But it is intriguing for an app that still has a sub-1.0 version number.
Posted by Paul Korm
Apr 25, 2017 at 02:46 AM
Interesting. Thanks for the tip. Reminds me of Quiver with its compositing of several document types.