Crazy toolchain for journal: org-mode is forever

Posted by Cyganet
Mar 17, 2021 at 08:03 PM

I’ve kept digital journal entries since 2004. I started in a program called iDailyDiary which had very friendly interface but didn’t get updated much. I also wrote separate plain text notes in various editors like Q10, writemonkey and Jarte.

I started using DavidRM’s The Journal in 2009 and have consolidated all my diary entries from other sources into it. It has an excellent import function that can read many different file types including RTF, CSV, DOC, DOCX, HTML, XML and ENEX, so I’ve never had any problems. Export goes to DOCX, HTML, RTF, TXT or PDF, so plenty of choices.

In terms of longevity of accessing data, interestingly enough I found it in MS Word. I wrote my PhD thesis in DOC format (in 2000) and was able to open it in MS Word last year. For all that people worry about lock-in and proprietary formats, it worked just fine. Yes, MS Word can disappear, but so far so good.