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As we knew, Google stopped the development of Google Notebook. Though lots of alternatives exist, no one satisfies me (see below for the reasons). Many suggest Google to open source it, but Google didn't response by so far. So I'd like to turn to open source world to develop one. In a nutshell, Google Notebook attracts me in the following ways:

  1. Every notes of a certain notebook present in the form of "list" intuitively. Notes can be dragged to rearrange and organized into Sections, meanwhile notes and sections can be collapsed and expanded easily. To the best of my knowledge, no other note taking software or web service functions like that.

  2. Need to begin a new note? Just move the mouse cursor to any "blank strip" between two notes and click--a new note will emerge there, waiting for your edition, or you can change it into Section freely. No need for the stupid "New Note" button or anything of the kind, and you can always make your new note in the exact place you want. That's the best part that Google Notebook offers, and that I'd like to seek for in the world of existed open source projects.

Well, these are the most valuable things I'd like to have in my new note taking software. Please tell me which open source projects I should learn for, whether web-based (e.g. PHP projects) or executable software (cross-platform is better) will be OK. Thanks very much.

Whitewall
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xell
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9 Answers9

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Closest thing I've found was WorkFlowy. Dividing things into categories is not as straightforward (you need to create "subnotes"), but otherwise the interface and the features are similar (although I still prefer Google Notebook's).

Will give OneNote a try as well. If the OneNote webapp is any good, I might end up going in that direction.

Cobra
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the tomboy project guys are developing a django-based web client with and additional api for desktop-sync. it looks interesting. check it out:

knoopx
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Well, there's Chandler. My first thought when I saw Google Notebook was that Chandler had better get its ass in gear...

chaos
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  • looks like chandler has some issues over linux-ubuntu installations. Which OS are you using. If ubuntu, did you got it working fine. – Vivek Sharma Jul 15 '09 at 03:31
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I have been using Zim-Wiki for along time, really liked it. Will evaluate chandler. Actually we all read articles takes notes, and wish a smiple but powerful desktop wiki or notebook.
Zim-wiki doesnot start a page by clinking over a empty space, as its not ajax based. Anyways here's a set of tools i use to keep my notes.

  • Zim-Wiki, for something i read, and wish to add my perspective for late reference.
  • Bokmark, the links for later reference
  • BScrapBook feature in firefox, or scrapbook+ feature of firefox3.5

I have not found a one-solution product as of now. I hope someone provides a better integrated product.

Zim is extra-simple, usual keyboard shortcuts and intuitive layout , thus hardly any learning cure. It is cross platform, and i share my same common notebook across my windows and linux.

Vivek Sharma
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It's not open source, but Microsoft OneNote is pretty stellar in my opinion. It's pretty similar to Notebook(click to start a new note, tags, searching across all notebooks, etc..) and it's easy to move your notebooks around if you have OneNote installed on more than one machine. I've used a handful of others and none of them have been as intuitive and easy to use.

Dcritelli
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Not open source, but Evernote has an API. I haven't seen any other app with so many modes of getting notes to their system (cell phone with camera integration, web, desktop app). Everything can synchronize. If you have the desktop app installed, it has command-line capability.

There is a tagging system similar to Stackoverflow. All the different notebooks, drag-and-drop arrangements are in the desktop version.

JeffO
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I actually started using fishCode Library.Net and I really like it. I sync it to Live Mesh so database nodes are always in sync.

Srikar Doddi
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I just moved from Google Notebook to Google Documents. I essentially just use it as a log book creating an entry for each day with a few lines of details. Works fine for me so far.

David Plumpton
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I created a webapplication called jottinx to replace Google Notebook for me. It is not open source, but it is free to use. I looked at the alternatives, and frankly found none to be really to my liking. Honestly it still is very much a work in progress, so I do not yet have the drag/drop/collapsing notes, but I am working on that.

You can import your Google Notebook Atom xml files, and work from there again.

For the moment it is a simple clean application, and I use markdown to write your notes, which I personally prefer as I tend to keep also code snippets and scripts in my notes.

As this is still in progress, I am always keen to receive feedback ...

nathanvda
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