I've been looking for a replacement for Ulysses (due to its change to subscription model -- just adding this in case someone reads this months from now without the benefit of the long thread about Ulysses moving to subscription). I tried Bear and MWeb, both very good markdown editors, but neither quite makes it for me. Bear lacks the ability to segregate work into a folder structure (though you can simulate that with tags -- but I don't like relying on tags). And MWeb is packed with a lot of features for writing code, which is just a distraction to me.

Since I bought Notebooks for iOS and Mac years ago, I am able to pick up and use them again without any hassle (or subscription), but I will be purchasing a license for the Windows version if this experiment works out.

Unlike Ulysses, Notebooks was originally written for iPad, so the iOS version is slicker than the Mac version, but the latter seems pretty solid. While Notebooks didn't stick with me when I first tried it, I am now putting my nose to the grindstone -- somewhat out of necessity -- and learning it.

I'll start by acknowledging that there are several things Notebooks does not do as well as Ulysses, or doesn't do at all. The ones I'll miss the most:

- It doesn't allow you to concatenate separate documents (sheets in Ulysses parlance) for viewing or export.
- It doesn't allow for adding non-printable comments to the text.
- It has fewer and less elegant export options.
- It is generally not as elegant in many aspects, especially the Mac version
- I suspect that general syncing is not going to be as seamless as Ulysses.

But there are also advantages to using Notebooks over Ulysses beyond the subscription issue:

- Documents are individual files stored on your computer like any other file. And they are readable by many other apps.
- You can create task lists within Notebooks
- There is a Windows version, so I can access my work easily on ALL my devices. The Windows version is a bit rough around the edges, but is perfectly serviceable.
- It's easy to sync Notebooks to Scrivener (well, that's the claim -- I haven't tried it yet)

As a writing environment, Notebooks has been perfectly fine so far. You can learn more about the app, here:

http://www.notebooksapp.com/

Anyone else using Notebooks to a significant extent?

Steve Z.

Anyone else using Notebooks to a significant extent?

Not yet (at least not to a significant extent).
But I am also going to switch over from Ulysses, in particular, as there is a Windows app.
What I like most is that Notebooks stores each note in a separate file (TXT, RTF or HTML). Syncing between iPad and Windows hasn't been a problem so far.

I've also had Notebooks since it's first appearance on iOS and then on the Mac. For some reason it hasn't grabbed me as a primary tool. I I like it for the reasons Steve and Franz give, but I don't think I'm going to spend a lot of time with it. Just can't put my finger on why it's second tier on my machines.

A couple of points. Notebooks supports "Formatted Notes" which are a kind of hybrid HTML document. That's useful because DEVONthink also supports these notes. The world is not going to give up markdown in favor of Formatted Notes -- but it's good to know two solid pieces of software find it useful to be compatible with one-another when it comes to this feature.

If you index your Notebooks folders in DEVONthink (a good and common use case), I suggest you take a look at Greg's technique for hiding the .plist files that Notebooks places in indexed folders so the .plists don't clutter your databases. See http://forum.devontechnologies.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=16193&p=88923&hilit=Notebooks#p88923

I'm lurking about on this thread as I have also dumped Ulysses. I never really got into Ulysses although I had one version or another of it for years. I get turned off from an app that starts off with "It is so easy, we didn't even write a user manual for it".

It has fewer and less elegant export options.

Why do you need to export? the point of transparently storing files in Finder is to avoid the whole process of export and import. If the app supports transparent storing of the files, to my sense, looking for export feature is like asking for an inferior feature.

Ulysses exports documents not just in different file formats (PDF, ePub, Plain Text, HTML, DocX), it also has several different styles depending on what type of document you're exporting. It is really one of the most thoughtful features of the app.

Dellu wrote:

It has fewer and less elegant export options.

Why do you need to export? the point of transparently storing files in
Finder is to avoid the whole process of export and import. If the app
supports transparent storing of the files, to my sense, looking for
export feature is like asking for an inferior feature.

Following this discussion, last week I installed Notebooks on my windows 10 machine. Tried to run it, but it was dead as a dodo. I wrote to support, and I'm still waiting for their response.

That's disturbing. I am running it okay on Windows 7, but haven't tried 10. Would like to hear what support has to say.


Tomasz Raburski wrote:

Following this discussion, last week I installed Notebooks on my windows
10 machine. Tried to run it, but it was dead as a dodo. I wrote to
support, and I'm still waiting for their response.

Doesn't Ulysses have one or two key characteristics which any potential replacement ought to match or exceed?

There seem to me to be at least two such characteristics. They are: its facility to allow "chunks" of text to be quickly and easily re-arranged within the whole, and its feature enabling relatively straightforward export or "compilation" of the text in a wide variety of styles and formats. Those two features make it particularly attractive if you're engaged in writing medium- or long-form work (and these plainly provide reasons for novelist David Hewson's fondness for it). And it has other features which also support this type of writing.

Notebooks is of course, as its name suggests, primarily a note-taking application (and it's a very good one). In other words, it's an application primarily designed for writing and managing short-form text. Of course, there's potential for cross-over between Notebooks and Ulysses: in the past I've certainly read of some users deploying Ulysses when Notebooks or its rivals might seem the more obvious tool, and I'm sure the opposite is also true. I'm sure that you could write "War and Peace" in Notebooks - but you could also do so in countless applications. But if you want software that will match Ulysses' attributes as closely as possible, it seems to me that Notebooks will leave you somewhat disappointed.

Hmmm. Unfortunate. I've been running Notebooks on Windows 10 for quite awhile. No crashes or issues.

Tomasz Raburski wrote:

Following this discussion, last week I installed Notebooks on my windows
10 machine. Tried to run it, but it was dead as a dodo. I wrote to
support, and I'm still waiting for their response.

Hugh wrote:

There seem to me to be at least two such characteristics. They are: its
facility to allow "chunks" of text to be quickly and easily re-arranged
within the whole, and its feature enabling relatively straightforward
export or "compilation" of the text in a wide variety of styles and
formats. Those two features make it particularly attractive if you're
engaged in writing medium- or long-form work (and these plainly provide
reasons for novelist David Hewson's fondness for it). And it has other
features which also support this type of writing.

That is true. Ulysses is best compared with writing (word processing) applications like Scrivener while Notebooks more comparable to noting applications like nvALT, and Tinderbox. If you want to get a finished product, Notebooks might not be the right one.

You are right, Hugh, if your primary use of Ulysses is writing longer-form pieces (as does David Hewson). What I'm looking for in a Ulysses replacement are these attributes:

- plain text/markdown editor
- iOS and MacOS clients that sync well
- easy ability to export work into other apps (namely Scrivener)

Even with that modest list, there are not a lot of options. If I added your two key characteristics, then there is no replacement for Ulysses. But I'm determined to avoid being sucked into their subscription model. So compromise is necessary. That work done in Notebooks can be easily imported into (even sync'd with) Scrivener (which also handles the two key characteristics) makes it a viable alternative for me. Still testing it, though.

The reason Scrivener isn't a replacement straight up is that Scrivener is built around project documents. It's not really designed to handle both random notes and compositional writing.

Steve Z.

Hugh wrote:

Doesn't Ulysses have one or two key characteristics which any potential
replacement ought to match or exceed?

There seem to me to be at least two such characteristics. They are: its
facility to allow "chunks" of text to be quickly and easily re-arranged
within the whole, and its feature enabling relatively straightforward
export or "compilation" of the text in a wide variety of styles and
formats. Those two features make it particularly attractive if you're
engaged in writing medium- or long-form work (and these plainly provide
reasons for novelist David Hewson's fondness for it). And it has other
features which also support this type of writing.

Notebooks is of course, as its name suggests, primarily a note-taking
application (and it's a very good one). In other words, it's an
application primarily designed for writing and managing short-form text.
Of course, there's potential for cross-over between Notebooks and
Ulysses: in the past I've certainly read of some users deploying Ulysses
when Notebooks or its rivals might seem the more obvious tool, and I'm
sure the opposite is also true. I'm sure that you could write "War and
Peace" in Notebooks - but you could also do so in countless
applications. But if you want software that will match Ulysses'
attributes as closely as possible, it seems to me that Notebooks will
leave you somewhat disappointed.

Have to say that the new Keep It (I'm playing with beta 2 at the moment, alongside my usual work) is quite a nice authoring tool in itself. There are still a few bugs (I'm making a list), but it's already very stable.

It's got a lot of different options for categorising stuff: folders, bundles (like "virtual" folders, so you can include a single note in multiple bundles), labels (not quite sure how useful they are) and tags. It's easy to import/export all kinds of stuff, it's also easy to share all kinds of stuff (it already offers iCloud sharing, presumably based on functionality that will shortly be introduced alongside iOS 11), and it's got a very nice "window always on top" feature (I wish more notetakers had this) that allows you to float it over other windows in "Compact" mode. Very sensible!

Documents are kept as separate files (albeit in Keep It's own format) and can be viewed in the Finder. The Search function is powerful, and while it doesn't automatically highlight hits in the way that Ulysses or Bear do, there's a micro-search function for each note that automatically picks up the umbrella search term you've been using: this does highlight the hits.

Finally, like Together, Keep It is mind-bogglingly efficient: just 12.4 MB in my Applications folder. Presumably because it makes clever use of existing Apple components (rich-text editor, Spotlight etc.). I'm really rather taken with it.

What I'd like to see would be a separate tags tree like Quiver's (ideally with a tag hierarchy like 2Do's), and maybe a labels tree too (hey, why not?). And while Keep It supports styles, they appear to be built-in (i.e. non-editable); that needs to change, too.

Very nice version 1.0 coming up, however...

Cheers,
Bill

Sorry, I didn't finish off my authoring thought. Something like Keep It is ideal for authoring, in many ways, because notes can be edited in separate windows, or in separate tabs, or both. Although it doesn't support the impressive Ulysses "multi-note" view (where you can amalgamate the contents of multiple notes into a single one), I wonder if that really matters?

The tags, labels, folders etc. would make it easy to keep track of characters, plot lines, chapters and so on (or of different themes/topics, subjects etc. in an academic/technical paper). And the ability to import and index more or less any kind of document would make it easy to keep reference material alongside your written work.

So not unlike Notebooks, in fact, but with the advantage of being slimmer and more elegant (at the moment; prove us wrong, Alfons!).

Thanks for this summary, Bill.

I think the point about the multi-note (or Scrivenings) view is that its importance depends on what you're writing. If what you're writing is simply a short note, it's unlikely to be important (although I've seen short texts where a multi-note/Scrivenings view was helpful).

But immediately the length of the text becomes such that structure is a significant part of your consideration whilst you're writing - then the ability to change structure easily, and therefore to "chunk" and concatenate the text and experiment with its order become key parts of your work.