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Notebooks as a Ulysses replacement
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Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Aug 18, 2017 at 05:20 PM
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:
Anyone else using Notebooks to a significant extent?
Steve Z.
Posted by Franz Grieser
Aug 18, 2017 at 05:30 PM
>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.
Posted by Paul Korm
Aug 18, 2017 at 09:05 PM
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
Posted by Jeffery Smith
Aug 18, 2017 at 11:45 PM
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”.
Posted by Dellu
Aug 19, 2017 at 03:51 PM
> 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.