Suggestions for development of cross-platform Linux Outliner Note-taking software

Posted by Hugh
Sep 8, 2009 at 04:20 PM

My advice is: ?Don?t do it?. Unless you have a vision of a new way doing cross-platform note-taking, and a source of significant finance.

Very sorry to be so negative and rain on your parade. From a selfish point of view it would be really handy to see a new cross-platform entrant to the note-taking application market, and even better if it satisfied numerous requirements which I could list but most of which are covered in the posts above.

However? as David says, the market is very crowded.

On Windows, there are numerous competitors. OneNote is the elephant in the room.

On the Mac, the field though much smaller is slightly more open, but some successful developers have been established in it for a long time with products with solid track records. And some of the most successful, at least in reputational terms, such as the developers of Journler and Mori, have recently got out of note-taking software. One has to ask ?Why??

Overall on those two platforms you?d be competing directly with EverNote. EverNote is not perfect, but when the web version launched it went in a relatively new direction with a unique-ish combination of features, it?s become a well-financed operation, development is proceeding apace and it?s on every major platform. Except Linux, of course, but there?ve been calls for a Linux version of EverNote, and you can be sure that if you looked like establishing a strong market position on Linux, EverNote would have the resources to be there before you (if it thought the effort was worthwhile).

Of course, none of your potential competitors is perfect by any stretch of the imagination. There?s huge scope for a lot of improvements. Steve Z. has listed two really good ones. But many of the existing products are good enough for the general market that EverNote, OneNote and others supply, and for that market, ?good enough? is enough.

We on this forum can see the flaws, gaps and imperfections in all those applications, but we are connoisseurs and afficionados, we aren?t necessarily going to come up with the breakthroughs or vision that will have the market knocking on your door, and our purchases alone aren?t going to stop your operation from going broke.

So, at least in creative and inventive terms you?d have to out-EverNote EverNote. And then you?d have to have long-term determination and financial staying-power too. Oh, and luck.

As I say, sorry to be so negative.