There are a lot of fancier note taking tools but I keep going back to Zim. Been using it for years for private offline note-taking for work. I use quick notes and journal shortcuts many times a day to quickly jot down a followup note/idea/question in meetings. It's also my GTD system with tasks plugin. Love that it's just text files so I can manually edit them, version control, sync in private cloud service, etc. Never worry about losing my data.<p>There are a few quirks I've gotten used to over the years though:<p>- Pasting code will be garbled or auto-create tags unless you use the source view plugin or paste verbatim.<p>- Takes a little configuration out of the box to get just right, system dependencies, links opening in right browser, plugins, shortcuts, fonts. But once you get streamlined it just works.<p>- The syntax feels a little strange to me but I rarely need to edit raw files. I could also export to Markdown if I ever wanted to migrate.<p>My last tip, templates are awesome. I have ones for all kinds of things, like interviewing, 1-1s, and architecture design outline.
It is time to give a shout out to my favorite note taking app: Trilium <a href="https://github.com/zadam/trilium" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/zadam/trilium</a><p>Pros:<p><pre><code> 1. Data is saved in SQlite. I am at 33k notes and it springs open instantaneously.
2. Notes can be arranged into arbitrarily deep tree. Single note can be placed into multiple places in the tree. (Think soft-links)
3. WYSIWYG support (CKEditor)
4. Tags, advanced scripting features
5. Other ususal wiki stuff like backlinks, note-map etc
</code></pre>
Cons:<p><pre><code> 1. Electron.
2. Data is saved in SQlite, not plain text.</code></pre>
Let me add something here; Zim feels the most <i>personally extensible</i> (except for, of course, org-mode, I must admit)<p>I see a bunch of people here with laundry lists of requirements, and when I see them, I'm like -- yes, a lot of those seem reasonable, but I've also had the same, and I've just built them myself, with some <i>very</i> hacky Bash. But <i>any language</i> will work.<p>Examples..lets see. I add todo items from <i>anywhere</i> (including phone) with email. I use Blitzmail on the phone and an IMAP script on the computer to send myself a tagged email, then I have another script to check and parse and add them to Zims "Journal"<p>My personal website is in Zim. I have a short one-liner to update it to my server; but I also teach at a college. I learned just enough of the Canvas API to <i>also</i> update certain pages of it to my class webpages. Also another one to update the Slides I make in Zim as well.<p>Etc.
I've been using Zim for at least 10 years for notes, todo's, etc.<p>Recently I updated my setup to use syncthing for syncing between my desktop, laptop, and my Android phone. On my phone I use Markor, an open source app that supports the Zim markup format (along with Markdown and some others). I've been pretty happy with this setup.
Been using it for nearly a decade and have turned many people on to it.<p>I wrote about it some years back on my ugly blog:
<a href="https://www.tidbitsfortechs.com/2013/12/tech-tool-tidbit-zim-desktop-wiki/" rel="nofollow">https://www.tidbitsfortechs.com/2013/12/tech-tool-tidbit-zim...</a><p>[edit. It said I turned many people <i>into</i> it which assumes that there are people out there who are Zims. Space invaders notwitstanding.]
Always gonna plug Maggie Appleton's seminal work on digital gardening whenever conversations about personal knowledge systems come up. It has some great resources in there<p><a href="https://maggieappleton.com/garden-history" rel="nofollow">https://maggieappleton.com/garden-history</a>
Once again I'm going to recommend tiddlywiki[0].<p>It has the hackability of emacs but can run anywhere a browser can ( both online and offline ). And of course, an active community and ecosystem built around it.<p>[0] <a href="https://tiddlywiki.com/" rel="nofollow">https://tiddlywiki.com/</a>
Using ZIM on a daily basis for more than 10 years. I use some of it's features more often than others:<p>- check lists as todo lists<p>- daily log<p>- drafting slides for presentations (using export to Presentation option and S5 option)<p>Primary way of syncing to other devices - shared nextcloud folder.<p>Pro: plain text files - can be edited by any available text editor in case I want to edit notes on an unsupported devices.<p>Cons: I don't like when it automatically creates notes for all phrases written in CamelCase. It is a wiki, but i don't use it as a true wiki, but as a bunch of notes.
Amazing little app. I'm also very thankful to Zim for the fact that I still have the easily-searchable text files from my years of Zim use over a decade ago. It made it really easy to recover things that I wrote back then, because they were never really tucked away inside of a database somewhere.
Back when I was searching for a good note-taking system, each and everyone of them had one feature that I wanted that was missing. Zim Wiki was the first system I decided to stick with, and after 4+ years I never gravely missed anything. However, if you don't like organizing your stuff hierarchically, your experience might differ. Also, I kinda dig the desktop-centric approach. It feels more like a real tool than just some kind of "app".<p>Because it's written in python it is comparatively easy to extend and through its integrated web server you can serve up your notes with a custom design in no time.
Not long ago, I ran through a bunch of wiki programs and eventually landed on Zim as my comfort zone. It's very light, looks pretty good, and just works! The syntax is a bit weird, and as someone mentioned, it doesn't handle code very well. Still really great and an easy recommend, though.<p><a href="https://ronitray.xyz/personal-wiki/" rel="nofollow">https://ronitray.xyz/personal-wiki/</a>
I really want to share logseq[0] if anyone isn’t yet familiar with it, I’ve been using it for a few months and it is absolutely fucking <i>superb</i>.<p>I like it so much I became a sponsor. Same kinda deal, writes markdown you spaff at gitlab or wherever, but with a graph, amazing linking and soft (unreferenced) links, it’s literally my external brain at this point.<p>Few tools I can recommend so much, and it doesn’t even have a vi mode yet. I hope to continue using it for many years.<p>0: <a href="https://logseq.com/" rel="nofollow">https://logseq.com/</a>
12 years and counting - home, work and business notes - I've tried lots of others but this is still the best notetaking tool out there<p>* It never changes - the same user-inter face,the same muscle memory, for over a decade
* Pages are stored as plain text files and sub pages in sub folders - which means attachments are also in subfolders
* The index and todo list can be re-created from the files at any time
* Pages are saved as you type them
* As well as full text search, you get the ability to instantly search for page names
I have used zim for notes for well over 10 years now, maybe 15.<p>It has made the all the difference in my career.<p>To any new person I know in my career I try to hammer home take notes, all the time take notes. I always wondered if some day I could write a book just from it
I have experimented with Cherrytree, I did org-mode for a year. Recently I did Obsidian.<p>Keep coming back to my beloved Zim.<p>Super extensible without being overwhelming.<p>I do my personal notes, my blogging, my course website and even my Slides (instead of Powerpoint) with it.
Looks good. I've been using VimWiki and really make the most of it's ability to link to local files and directories with file:// . This makes for a superb way of keeping on top of various admin tasks, as I just write a checklist, and link directly to the local file or remote dir and I'm away. I would like it even more if I could link to specific emails with email:// . There was a thunderbird plugin, called thunderlink, where I did get this working, but then thunderbird stopped finding the emails, so I lost faith in it.
This is what I use for all my notes, and my tasks, and my schedule.<p>Amazing application. Comparable and better than everything I've seen on hacker news over the years.<p>My only complaint is no mobile client, though markor can generate a Zim-Wiki file.
Another really good program (that I personally prefer) is Joplin: <a href="https://joplinapp.org/" rel="nofollow">https://joplinapp.org/</a>
I've tried a lot of note taking apps and Workflowy[0] has been my favorite for the last ~5 years.<p>At its core it's a bulleted list that you can expand and collapse. Super simple and works just as well for quick ToDo lists as for in-depth ideation and project tracking. Recently they've added features such as tags and boards, which I mostly ignore, but the core product is super simple, powerful, and flexible. 100% free and with good web, mobile, and desktop apps.<p>[0] <a href="https://workflowy.com/online-notepad/" rel="nofollow">https://workflowy.com/online-notepad/</a>
I've been using Google Docs for my note taking and have been very happy with it, but the news I've heard about suddenly closed accounts with no recourse for recovery make me skeptic of its long-term viability.
Not to be confused with Zim [0], a zsh configuration framework that's generally faster than oh-my-zsh [1].<p>[0] <a href="https://github.com/zimfw/zimfw" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/zimfw/zimfw</a><p>[1] <a href="https://ohmyz.sh/" rel="nofollow">https://ohmyz.sh/</a>
There's been a great app for the Mac like this for years and years:<p><a href="https://www.voodoopad.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.voodoopad.com</a>
For me the killer feature of Zim is the native integration with Git. It's super easy to write and commit, write some more, commit again. You don't even have to leave the editor interface.<p>I've coupled this with git pre-commit and post-commit hooks which basically ensure that the changes are always pushed to GitHub.<p>I've found a similar application for Android called GitJournal. Unfortunately it doesn't do the wiki syntax which Zim recognizes. Only markdown and plain text. So I have a separate repo for my mobile notes. They're usually much shorter anyway, the type of notes you'd put on a sticky.<p>Hopefully one of these tools will learn the format of the other in the future. That would allow us to use both of them on the same repo.
It's silly. But I want these features in my offline personal wiki:<p>- sortable table like wikipedia's<p>- sortable list and other list manipulation tools from dynalist/worflowy's<p>- automatically adding titles when you copy links of articles/videos/etc.<p>I'd like to think I'm not the only one who mostly uses lists and tables to organize information and notes. Quick googling says org-mode can do the first 2. I tried spacemacs and it was just confusing. One day.
I used to use this all the time and its a great app. But when I moved to Mac, it was not there for me. I recently started with <a href="https://obsidian.md/" rel="nofollow">https://obsidian.md/</a> and I'm pretty happy with it. Its all markdown and it converts from markdown to formatted text as you type. Plus, the price is right fore personal use (zero!)
I was using TiddlyWiki, but I stopped about two years ago. I use OneNote for everything because I am primarily Windows based, but I do have an iMac and Linux machines too. I may give this a try. I still go back to pen and paper in bound books a lot, but for listing and sharing this looks good.
Zim is not very known but this tool is really awesome!<p>I use it for a few years also.<p>I like it because it is simple, efficient, fast. Straight to the point. Not like all these cloud and electron apps.<p>And the main top feature of this tool is that data are stored as plain files in a simple folder structure.
I use this at work to keep my notes on our code base. There's a bit of a strict policy about using unapproved apps, and it makes me a bit nervous there is git integration. I definitely wouldn't want anything to get pushed someplace somehow.
I ended up switching to FOAM (the vscode extension) for personal notes because it's markdown and has much better support for inline planuml and showing node connections as a graph, but I haven't actually bothered changing my work notes away from ZIM because once stuff is in it, it kinda just works. If you don't care about visualizing links between different pages, it does a great job at making hierarchical notes searchable. My biggest gripe was that inserting plantuml code was really clunky because it doesn't update live (you have to submit your changes before seeing the result) but it's still very functional.
I've used Zim about 8 years ago, but lost interest after a month. If I remember correctly, there were no Windows builds for a time, just an instruction how to compile it.<p>I've been looking at Logseq and Obsidian recently.
A bit off-topic (but still related to making Markdown more usable), I found an Admonition plugin[0] for Obsidian the other day that really knocked my socks off. I love having visual guides in wikis that help draw your attention to various things, and this is really perfect for my uses. If Zim had a similar function, I might be tempted to start using it again...<p>[0] <a href="https://github.com/valentine195/obsidian-admonition" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/valentine195/obsidian-admonition</a>
Can you help me out? You have a lot of great alternatives - does any of them allow to arrange notes in a tree-like manner, like a mind map? A graphical tree/mindmap that links to longer articles?<p>I think I saw an opensource tool like that before, but lost track of it.<p>EDIT: I'm trying out some of your links. Logseq seems cool, has a strange logic but has some graph visualization of nodes and plugins with direct mindmap support. Feel free to make suggestions anyway!
I used to love zim! I used it for a few years, but when i started travelling for work, it became tough to keep up with notes since i really needed a mobile client. Nowadays, it feels like 50% of my notes are captured while on the go, so a mobile client is now by far absolutely required for my workflow. I still give zim team lots of love, but just doesn't fill my needs as it used to.
I'm using Confluence for note taking and as a diary and it works pretty well (search functionality is beyond abysmal), compared to all the other options I've tried.<p>But this one is the first desktop application which is really interesting and could have become my solution for these tasks. I'll definitely keep it installed and try it out.
Does Zim support inter-document linking to arbitrary locations?<p>I feel like at some point I must have tried Zim, but for some reason I abandoned it. Perhaps it was the inter-document linking/referencing thing. Or it was its markup language having other limitations? I don't remember.<p>Nowadays I do all my note taking and knowledge storing using org-mode.
Zim, the worst software I use daily. This was a weird realization.<p>Why worst? Anything you try, except for writing text, does not work the way you would expect and usually works in exactly the worst possible way. Good luck copy/pasting anything.<p>I really need to find a better note-taking that does not try to do a fancy "mind map".
Is the Zim format used in this the same as the one used by Kiwix to store an offline copy of Wikipedia (and others)?<p><a href="https://www.kiwix.org/en/downloads/kiwix-content-packages/" rel="nofollow">https://www.kiwix.org/en/downloads/kiwix-content-packages/</a>
Is there a similar app to Zim that is properly native macOS? I like the concept and the features of Zim, but it's a bit unwieldy on the Mac. The UI doesn't look native, the shortcuts are a bit strange and it's slow. When I click on maximize window (as an example) it took 3 seconds.
Good memories from Zim.<p>I used OneNote 2016 after Zim in a period where I was stuck on Windows anyway but modern OneNote broke so much that I don't use OneNote anyway even if it is now cross platform.<p>The last year I have used Joplin which is awesome.<p>Lately though I have used Logseq for no other reason than that it feels even more awesome.
These are the features I'd like in a wiki / personal knowledge engine:<p>- Not a service. This has to be durable and portable.<p>- Backed primarily by git and plaintext files, not a database. Explorable and manageable on the filesystem.<p>- Markdown<p>- Hyperlinks to articles that show up red if the page doesn't exist (yet). If a page is renamed, all hyperlinks to it must automatically update.<p>- Multiple tags / categories can be added to any page. Bonus if it supports hierarchical categories. These get indexed and can be bulk managed. When pages are updated and their tags change, the system automatically handles the bookkeeping.<p>- Indexed fuzzy search better than grep<p>- Server + browser interface (mobile friendly). It should also support editing from the browser and saving back to git.<p>- Native desktop app. Less important, but also enforces that git, files, and a simple set of indices are the core data model.<p>- Sync over git / github with easy diff fixing<p>- Publish to a public or private website. Bonus if statically rendered snapshots are supported.<p>- Despite all of the ancillary indices and support mechanisms, it must remain CLI/vim editing friendly. Indexes and links should update as a post commit hook or async job<p>- Images and media can be uploaded to a secondary service that handles indexing, hosting, backups, and thumbnail generation. This is a whole set of concerns all on its own.<p>tl;dr: git + markdown data model with a bunch of bookkeeping, indexing, and tooling on the side<p>I haven't found a good fit yet, but I haven't explored the entire space. I might just write it one of these days.<p>Definitely looking for recommendations!<p>Edit: thanks for the suggestions! :)
A very nice little mixed-media editor. Slightly more heavyweight in terms of file dependencies than I'm used to on Windows (but makes sense given cross-platform origins).<p>Strikes me as similar to the excellent (but unfortunately abandoned) NoteLiner.
I just use a private WordPress instance with minimal theme. WordPress has fairly good Mobile admin app. Quite close to a cross platform solution. However, I wish iCloud notes had photo upload feature to make it true cross platform.
Used Zim for several years to maintain personal wiki for tech support tasks (mostly email drafts / canned responses on different topics). But I don’t use it now and don’t recall why I dropped it.
Don't forget Wikidpad -- <a href="https://github.com/WikidPad/WikidPad" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/WikidPad/WikidPad</a>
Hard to beat!
If you like this, you might like ZuluPad - <a href="http://zulupad.gersic.com/zulupad.html" rel="nofollow">http://zulupad.gersic.com/zulupad.html</a>
I just started programming in zig and I have to say that the tooling is <i>incredible</i>. It has things that I never knew I wanted as a C programmer, like automatically detecting undefined behavior and integer overflows. If you’re looking for an alternative to C for a greenfield project I highly recommend it.