Just a few more thoughts about CintaNotes, which has been discussed here occasionally:

The usual comment about CN (which I too have made from time to time) is that it's suitable only for small, uncomplicated lists, but I've now come to the conclusion that its stripped-down UI is actually misleading. I'm in the midst of using it for a much larger project, and so far it's working very well.

Of course the individual notes are relatively brief, and CN's handling of illustrations continues to be awkward, but aside from those obvious limitations, it actually handles material on a larger scale than I thought possible. I'm working on a digital bibliography of the poet George Mackay Brown

https://gmbbibliography.wordpress.com/

and so far in my notes I have approximately approximately 1250 entries for the bibliography (not counting some miscellaneous background material). CN, I find, is able to deal easily with information on this scale, though of course it helps to split the notebook into several sections and to use common sense about images.

Here is a sample entry in CintaNotes, just to show how I am using it:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/m5kju64u2nmsuk4/Sample entry.JPG?dl=0

I have added quite a few tags (at the bottom) for this entry, because CN — more than any other note-taking program I've ever used — is built around tags. The line below it ("1987-05-21") is the remarks field, which I am using for the date, where it becomes easily sortable.

I began by trying to do this project in Evernote, which is in many ways a much more powerful program, but EN is also awkward to use, whereas CN has a simple interface, has a tagging system even better than EN's, and is rock-solid. At the moment it seems like the best solution to my problem (though I'm keeping a careful eye on the changes in Evernote that have been promised for later this year).

Bill

WSP, your post reminded me I hadn't checked CintaNotes website for a long time. I went to the roadmap, and was shocked to see many posts dealing with topics which have nothing to do with CN.

Has the CN site been hacked, or is this a sign the program is either not being attended to, or is no longer being developed?

Daly

WSP wrote:

Just a few more thoughts about CintaNotes, which has been discussed here
occasionally:

The usual comment about CN (which I too have made from time to time) is
that it's suitable only for small, uncomplicated lists, but I've now
come to the conclusion that its stripped-down UI is actually misleading.
I'm in the midst of using it for a much larger project, and so far it's
working very well.

Of course the individual notes are relatively brief, and CN's handling
of illustrations continues to be awkward, but aside from those obvious
limitations, it actually handles material on a larger scale than I
thought possible. I'm working on a digital bibliography of the poet
George Mackay Brown

https://gmbbibliography.wordpress.com/

and so far in my notes I have approximately approximately 1250 entries
for the bibliography (not counting some miscellaneous background
material). CN, I find, is able to deal easily with information on this
scale, though of course it helps to split the notebook into several
sections and to use common sense about images.

Here is a sample entry in CintaNotes, just to show how I am using it:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/m5kju64u2nmsuk4/Sample entry.JPG?dl=0

I have added quite a few tags (at the bottom) for this entry, because CN
— more than any other note-taking program I've ever used —
is built around tags. The line below it ("1987-05-21") is the remarks
field, which I am using for the date, where it becomes easily sortable.

I began by trying to do this project in Evernote, which is in many ways
a much more powerful program, but EN is also awkward to use, whereas CN
has a simple interface, has a tagging system even better than EN's, and
is rock-solid. At the moment it seems like the best solution to my
problem (though I'm keeping a careful eye on the changes in Evernote
that have been promised for later this year).

Bill

Yes, the site seems to get hacked from time to time, and then in a few days the fake messages (usually just annoying advertisements for shoes) are erased by the moderator.

Alex, the developer, does seem to be working actively on the next version

(here is preview of it: http://cintanotes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2357

but bear in mind that CintaNotes is more or less a one-man operation and things move slowly. Though the prototype appears to be going in the right direction, I'll be surprised if Version 4 appears this year. CN reminds me in some ways of MyInfo, another app that I use and admire: it's created by a developer who is extremely helpful and courteous, brimming over with clever ideas, but always proceeding at a cautious pace. On the other hand, CintaNotes is fully usable for me right now.

I am happy to see what you wrote, and I hope that you are right.

Unfortunately, nothing says "abandon-ware" or "I have been hacked" like a web site full of spam postings. What I saw the other day makes it look like the site has not been attended to for a long time, and that also is not a good message to have in the marketplace.

I am glad CintaNotes is working so well for you.

Best,

Daly

WSP wrote:

Yes, the site seems to get hacked from time to time, and then in a few
days the fake messages (usually just annoying advertisements for shoes)
are erased by the moderator.

Alex, the developer, does seem to be working actively on the next
version

(here is preview of it:
http://cintanotes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2357

but bear in mind that CintaNotes is more or less a one-man operation and
things move slowly. Though the prototype appears to be going in the
right direction, I'll be surprised if Version 4 appears this year. CN
reminds me in some ways of MyInfo, another app that I use and admire:
it's created by a developer who is extremely helpful and courteous,
brimming over with clever ideas, but always proceeding at a cautious
pace. On the other hand, CintaNotes is fully usable for me right now.

For whatever it's worth, Alex Jenter has contributed 47 posts to the CintaNotes discussion forum since the beginning of April -- the most recent one dated yesterday. I'm not at all persuaded that he has abandoned CN; my one complaint, as I said earlier, is that the development proceeds at a snail-like pace. But I learned long ago that you sometimes have to put up with that when you are dealing with one- or two-person operations like CN.

I forgot to mention, incidentally, that CN does not offer an iOS version, but it will sync with Simplenote on my iPhone if I wish or -- my preferred solution -- I can very easily export an HTML file and then import that (from Dropbox) into a synced folder in the Documents app my phone. This file is of course static but is attractively formatted and easily searchable. Bringing it up to date from time to time takes only a few keystrokes.

For the last week or two the CintaNotes discussion forum has evaporated. Does anyone know what's going on?

If you haven't noticed, cintanotes.com itself is down.

Yes, thanks for pointing that out. I trust it will reappear eventually, but these small software outfits sometimes feel as if they are about to vanish without warning.

I confess that, despite my grand pronouncements last year, I had already begun to use CintaNotes less. The big bibliographical project I described earlier was starting to push CN to its limits; I thought about this long and hard, and eventually, a few months ago, I began to shift my notes (copy-and-paste, alas) over into Evernote. I did this very reluctantly, because I still think CN is a surprisingly good app, but I finally faced up to the fact that Evernote, though unpleasantly clunky in some ways, had the versatility and power that I needed.

I hope CintaNotes is still alive and well somewhere in Siberia!

This is just to report that the CintaNotes site is back online this morning, but with no explanation for its prolonged absence.

Bill

This is just to report that the CintaNotes site is back online this morning, but with no explanation for its prolonged absence.

Bill

There's an explanation (of sorts) in the forum:

"After a server upgrade went not exactly as planned, I had to recover from the last backup, which alas was made 5 days ago.
Truly sorry for not making an extra backup before starting the upgrade. For some reason I thought that backups on DigitalOcean were daily whereas in fact they were weekly."


WSP wrote:

This is just to report that the CintaNotes site is back online this
morning, but with no explanation for its prolonged absence.

Bill

That note was for mid-December, not for the outage in the last few days.

It's been a year since I raised some questions here about CintaNotes. I continue to use it regularly for certain purposes and find it extremely useful. But a few days ago I conducted an interesting experiment that startled me.

I had found on the Web a very large site with an enormous amount of material (text only) that I wanted to record, so I began dumping it all into a single Evernote note. Even at the time I realized this was not a good idea and that I should be creating a series of shorter notes, but I persisted in my folly. By the time I had thrown everything into one humongous note, I got a warning message on the screen that my note had exceeded the size limit. At that point I tried to delete the note I had just created, but Evernote crashed repeatedly.

Fair enough, I thought. That was rather silly of me. But then, just on impulse, I copied all of the same data into a single note in CintaNotes, which is of course a much more lightweight app, and to my astonishment it accepted this huge body of material without complaint, and I was then able to scroll through it quickly and without hesitation. I have no explanation for such unexpected behavior, except that Evernote nowadays increasingly feels like a quirky, overly complex program, whereas CintaNotes is bare-bones and extremely efficient.

I will of course to continue to fall back on Evernote daily, but this experience has given me new respect for the hidden power of CintaNotes. I had no idea that it could outperform Evernote in this way.