Tag Archives: application

Thinking about Note taking tools, seriously

Let’s talk about note taking, seriously.

Why I need to do this? There is lots and lots of note taking application and tools there in OS X.

And, even Apple has a nice note taking tools called Notes(yes, maybe not that good), and the famous Evernote (They did very good job on Notes, I must admit).

So, then, why I think there is the needs for a new note taking tool?

A shot answer, they are build for normal users, not for programmers.

And for the long answer, I’ll begin the requirements of note taking tool for programmers.

Here is the points:

  1. It (the note taking tool for programmers) must have the ability of bring out to you any time you want it, no interupt or changing the envronment (just like Dash run in the headless mode, yes, I like Dash very much!), it can be achieve by assigning a global shortcut key to the HUD window
  2. It must have the ability of saving the note you have taken as soon as you taken it, and store it even the application is quit, so you can view the notes next time you open it
  3. It should save the notes in the cloud, so that you can use the note you taken on every computer
  4. It should have the ability of store and showing Rich Text Format
  5. It should have the ability of Syntax coloring for the code snippets, and yes, by guessing or set (can be done using plugins)
  6. It should have the ability of text transforming (such as RTF to plain txt, Markdown or RST transform to HTML or other format, via plugins, of cause)
  7. It must interact with the clipboard

That’s why I think there should be a note for programmers.

I, as a programmer, really needs some text transformer or a shelf to come just as I called, it will just jump to me without let me goto desktop from my full screen application.

And, after that, it will send the text transformed to the clipboard(just plain text in most times), and just go away(with my text stored for next usage).

I have tried every note taking tools I can get, but none of them support my points.

They are beautiful, elegant and powerful, can even sync with my iPhone, but, they can’t answer for my requirement 1,5,6 (and that’s the function I want most).

So, I want to start a note taking tool on my own.

I’ll opensource it on Github when I finished the basic functions.

Go back to coding now.