A ramble about various note-taking applications

Posted by Amontillado
Jun 21, 2023 at 01:05 PM

Quite agree, in the main. For instance, I like MindNode but would like it a lot more if it supported some PKM-like features. It’s handsome enough I keep using it when I want to reach for a mind map.

Vim is another interesting thing I’ve thought about in this context. It’s ugly and I hated vi when I had to use it on Solaris systems - I wasn’t allowed to install emacs - but when I got up to speed on windows and tabs in text-mode vim, all of a sudden vim was a powerful ally. I still think I should do everything in emacs but I haven’t used it in a long, long time.

Vim is ugly. It’s also very powerful once you get your fingers programmed, but most importantly, it’s open. What vim won’t do is usually still possible.

For instance, you have a comma delimited file and you want the third field. You could do that with a regex, but why bother?

:%!cut -d, -f3

Drop to command line mode in vim, select all (%), pipe to external program (!), run cut -d, -f3 (cut each line into fields split by commas and keep the third field).

The ! pipes selected text to stdin on a script or program, and replaces the selected text with whatever comes out of stdout on the external program.

If you don’t like what you got, the undo function will pop you back to where you were before running the external program.

The only use I have for vi, I’m afraid, is as a symlink to vim. Vi is an antique.

‘Course, me calling anything an antique is the pot making aspersions about the kettle. Oh, well…

MadaboutDana wrote:
Hm. This is an interesting question, and I’ve mused on it for many
>years. I think the answer is actually quite simple. You’re using
>software that’s genuinely useful to you every day, for large parts of
>the day. That means it has to be enjoyable to use. Not just functional,
>not just “efficient”, but actively enjoyable. This means a couple for
>things:
> >a) it needs to do what it does in straightforward, uncomplicated ways
>that are easy to fathom and quick to turn into user habits
>b) it needs to look nice, so you smile when you open it and keep smiling
>as you come back to it – over and over again.
>