Quiver: Programmer's Notebook for OS X

The more I read about different applications, the more I think you can&#x27;t understand them unless you look at the underlying data format.<p>Here&#x27;s Quiver&#x27;s: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;HappenApps&#x2F;Quiver&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Quiver-Data-Format" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;HappenApps&#x2F;Quiver&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Quiver-Data-Format</a><p>It&#x27;s . . . really good. Like, _really_ good.<p>I particularly like that they keep the metadata and the content of the note separate. This is the same thing Camlistore does, and it&#x27;s nice for version control because making changes to the metadata (adding new tags or whatever) doesn&#x27;t show up as a content change.<p>Speaking of version control, Quiver&#x27;s thoughts on this are interesting:<p>&quot;Since Quiver stores all the data in plain JSON files, it’s easy to put the whole library (or a specific notebook) under version control. This is another way to collaborate with your team.&quot;<p>Leaving version control up to the user isn&#x27;t the worst, but it does mean that it won&#x27;t be straightforward to put an &quot;undo&quot; in the GUI (if the GUI already has undo somehow I&#x27;d like to hear how they do it).<p>I&#x27;m also not sure whether it would be better to version the whole notebook or individual qvnotes. I have more thoughts on this (starting from a slightly different angle of how it relates to wikis) here: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;housejeffries.com&#x2F;page&#x2F;4" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;housejeffries.com&#x2F;page&#x2F;4</a>.<p>EDIT: Something just occurred to me. If HappenApps wanted to make a machine readable schema for qvnotebook and qvnote they could use JSON Schema for the JSON part. What would they use for the directory part? Is there such a thing as a schema for directories? (e.g. this directory must contain a `content.json` file, a `meta.json` file, etc.)

Shiny, and I love the interface&#x2F;layout!<p>This looks a lot like the Jupyter&#x2F;IPython Notebook, which is a free and open source &quot;scientist&#x27;s notebook&quot;. If you&#x27;re interested in mixing LaTeX, Markdown, and code from almost any language (Python, R, and Julia are very well-supported but there&#x27;s an open kernel spec), then this might be a more appropriate tool for you to use.<p>The Jupyter&#x2F;IPython notebook default storage format is JSON, which makes it a little more friendly for text-based version control, and also enables a static HTML view of notebooks (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;nbviewer.jupyter.org&#x2F;github&#x2F;ketch&#x2F;teaching-numerics-with-notebooks&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;Introducing%20the%20IPython%20Notebook.ipynb" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;nbviewer.jupyter.org&#x2F;github&#x2F;ketch&#x2F;teaching-numerics-w...</a>) on GitHub.<p>Helen Shen wrote up a great article for Nature (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nature.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;interactive-notebooks-sharing-the-code-1.16261" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nature.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;interactive-notebooks-sharing-the...</a>) on how scientists are using the notebook, but it also provides a good overview of how you might use it, as well as a free interactive demo.

That looks very good, I just wish I could buy it outside of the mac app store. I really dislike buying for the app store and much prefer buying directly from the company...

The tutorial notebook is full of individual notes with multiple &#x27;cells&#x27;. When creating my own note, it&#x27;s not immediately obvious how I achieve this. Hitting ENTER just creates a new paragraph&#x2F;line within the same cell. I&#x27;ve discovered, through trial and error, that hitting SHIFT+ENTER creates a new cell, but this should maybe be more easily discoverable.<p>Some of the UI elements are a bit out-of-place. I&#x27;m not sure if it&#x27;s just because they&#x27;re not native controls; I&#x27;m still running on Mavericks and it&#x27;s quite possible these are El Capitan-style controls. Still, it&#x27;s a tiny bit disconcerting.<p>On a more positive note, I think this is a wonderful concept which can potentially inform future tools for &#x27;code management&#x27; (for want of a better term). I think there are plenty of ways in which the integration of code and other content can improve our discipline, so any work in this area is very interesting.

I happily use a github repo for taking my &#x27;programmer notes&#x27;. Advantages: 1. Goes well with my programming workflow: Change&#x2F;Commit&#x2F;Push 2. Allows me to use my preferred editor 3. No need to worry about backups: Git push and you&#x27;re done 4. Accessible from anywhere, even if you don&#x27;t have your computer<p>Is there anything that Quiver would offer that I wouldnt already have with a github repo?

Feature-wise, it looks a lot like org-mode - hierarchical rich text notebooks with support for Markdown, LaTeX, and code samples. Advantage: pretty OS X application. Disadvantages: OS X only, not integrated with the full power of Emacs.

I still use vimwiki. It has a few warts, but since I&#x27;m comfortable with it (as in when you learn some of the leader commands, it becomes more powerful) and files are saved to Dropbox, it makes work and home note taking convenient.<p>It&#x27;s particularly nice in that if you are already in vim; &lt;leader&gt;ww will open the wiki index.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;vimwiki&#x2F;vimwiki" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;vimwiki&#x2F;vimwiki</a><p>I&#x27;ve also been doing some note taking with :set filetype=journal in use with junegunn&#x27;s nice syntax.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;junegunn&#x2F;vim-journal" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;junegunn&#x2F;vim-journal</a>

Directions for taking notes on a computer:<p>- Create a folder.<p>- Create notes as files named like tweets `my note #javascript #yolo.txt`.<p>- Write markdown in plain text files.<p>- Open the folder from your choice of editor.<p>- Distribute your notes folder using Git, Dropbox, Drive, etc.<p>- Enjoy your notes FOREVER.<p>Atom works great when you need your notes in a Desktop environment. The command line is wonderful when you are on a server. Byword is amazing on iPhone. Nothing great I&#x27;ve found for Android yet.

A few questions 1) Any plans to support Windows or Linux 2) Do you handle High-DPI screens, (vector graphics for icons?, obey screen scaling)

This looks really awesome, will test it out. I like that they let you download the trial. Don&#x27;t like you have to go into the Apple Store to buy the app.<p>There is an app called Dash[1] that has a lot of source code and api documentation stored offline and searchable. It also boasts that you can put your own code snippets in it. So I really wanted to use Dash to keep all my code snippets in, as well as the documentation lookup feature. But adding code snippets to Dash is a somewhat involved process, and I eventually gave up on using it as a notebook. But it might be interesting to see about converting the freely downloadable docsets into something readable by Quiver. This might not be easily doable since these docsets are in a myriad of formats, and quiver only supports markdown and latex currently. Adding reStructured text would probably open up some possibilities.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kapeli.com&#x2F;dash" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kapeli.com&#x2F;dash</a>

I&#x27;ve been using this for a couple months after having become annoyed with Evernote always pestering me to move to their paid model.<p>I was able to import all my Evernote content very easily. I love the ability to use Markdown to take notes and the support for VIM commands in code blocks is nice.<p>The only thing I miss from Evernote is access from my iOS devices.

<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;yaoganglian.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;12&#x2F;06&#x2F;What-is-Quiver&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;yaoganglian.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;12&#x2F;06&#x2F;What-is-Quiver&#x2F;</a>

This is something I have been looking for with this type of interface. Markdown support seems the easiest, but why not use something more robust like AsciiDoc <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;asciidoc.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;asciidoc.org&#x2F;</a> ?

Been using this for a few weeks, and it is great! I&#x27;m sure that, compared to Evernote, it misses features that are important to some, but it adds a few of its own and is so much faster to use it&#x27;s in another league entirely.<p>Looking forward to the upcoming iOS version. The one feature I miss the most, besides that, is something like Evernote&#x27;s menu bar app, for quick entry&#x2F;scratchpad.

I&#x27;ve been using Quiver for the last year as a means of writing programming tutorials for beginners. Fantastic product.<p>I usually save the notebooks I create onto google drive, which gives me the ability to easily open each notebook on other machines. Poor man&#x27;s sync.

Love Quiver. I&#x27;ve been using it in grad school and has made it much easier to write out any non-lab assignments that require code snippets or references to code. Haven&#x27;t use the LaTex cells yet but the Markdown and Code Block cells have been great.

So perhaps I won&#x27;t have to write my own app for keeping an electronics projects logbook after all. There is a scarcity of reasonably simple apps that let you mix notes with images, without lots of clickery.<p>I will be taking a very close look at this app!

Ah, a Ulysses clone for developers.

That&#x27;s nice but costs $$. &lt;now here comes the bit where i talk about MY solution...&gt;<p>I have a markdown file in a private git repo for each month, I append a new header with the date at the start of each day and use it as a notepad, dumping whatever comes to mind. Most importantly I don&#x27;t go back and revise what I&#x27;ve written.

Org-mode is better !

Definitely using this over Evernote. This will come in handy when writing notes for any programming courses as well.

This is quality software. I&#x27;ve been using the built in osx &#x27;notes&#x27; for note taking for a while now and this is much better for my purposes. One thing I would like is to be able to run code snippets with a click of a button, I cannot seem to find that feature.

Speaking of monoculture: It is nothing wrong to start to build something on your daily platform firstly, then test if it will be accepted by users. Eventually, if it is loved by everyone, the founder should consider making it cross-platform (native, please!).

Absolutely love the interface&#x2F;layout and GitHub integration! Going to try it out tomorrow for my c# programming class notes since my hand-written notes for most programming classes are lacking.

interesting... but I started playing with orgmode a few weeks ago and I&#x27;m not going anywhere else. Especially after I finally found a nice (working) workflow for literate programming.

I definitely plan on checking this out. Another nice programmer&#x27;s notebook I&#x27;ve been using for awhile is Marxico <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;marxi.co&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;marxi.co&#x2F;</a>. It&#x27;s integrated with Evernote, but I think you can use it standalone.<p>It supports Markdown, code snippets (in markdown ```), latex and sequence&#x2F;flowchart diagrams.<p>To me it feels a little more natural to write a markdown document rather then thinking about each block of text as &quot;cells&quot;.

Great work! The Evernote importer will make the transition easy :)

Says it supports LaTeX, and then admits it won&#x27;t do anything but math mode. That isn&#x27;t LaTeX, that&#x27;s TeX. The &quot;La-&quot; isn&#x27;t there for nothing.

Quiver: A Programmer&#x27;s Notebook for OSX<p>There, I fixed the title.

I&#x27;m late to the conversation, but I bought a copy yesterday and I just could not be happier with the product. I&#x27;m hoping to convert all of my teaching notes and use the presentation mode in class. I have been a dedicated org-mode user, but this might be the one exception to my &quot;emacs for everything&quot; policy.

What exactly are the limitations on the free trial?<p>All I am seeing is a green &quot;Free Trial&quot; banner in the bottom left. Is that it?

This looks interesting. Would replace my use of evernote for such things.<p>I found this bit funny, though:<p>&quot;Quiver lets you sync all your notes across multiple computers via Dropbox, iCloud Drive, Google Drive, or any other file-based cloud services.&quot;<p>.. like .. any other application that saves files to disk into a synced folder?

I asked a question last year about whether there is an app like Evernote but more tailored to the programmer&#x27;s need. Quiver&#x27;s developer answered my post then but the app was lacking one major functionality - cloud sync. Let&#x27;s see if it&#x27;s addressed now :D

What I have been using for making programmer&#x27;s notes is CatWiki[1], a very simple wiki that uses Markdown and stores its pages as text files.<p>1: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;cabalamat&#x2F;catwiki" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;cabalamat&#x2F;catwiki</a>

Not clear from the description: is there any ability to execute code directly from the notebook?

There doesn&#x27;t seem to be an option for on disk encryption. I don&#x27;t want to leave my notes on dropbox or another sharing service in plain text - something that Laverrna has baked in. I just wish Laverna was as polished as this app.

Why oh why do people still write standard GUI applications in non-portable platform ?!<p>Its a mystery to me

Nice product. I&#x27;ve been using evernote for this kind of stuff for a long time.

Is there a way to scale up the fonts for the UI of the whole app? On a 27&#x27;&#x27; screen it just begs for it.<p>Is is possible to quickly switch a cell to a code format with a specified language? (triple backquotes? like ```python?)

I really enjoyed starting this up out of the box. I love that I can export and that I can write in latex. I&#x27;m curious if I can set this up as a notebook for scientific simulations including plots etc.

It seems the export note as a pdf, html or markdown option does not work in the trial version. But it is not mentioned anywhere. Is it a bug or as I mentioned - nonfunctional in the trial version?

I was skeptical, but looking at the features it could replace Evernote for the way I use it. The main reason I don&#x27;t use a directory full of text files is I like being able to drag in images.

What with the recent issues with Evernote, which I use heavily and the wonderful data format, I just bought this and am going to write a small program to export all my evernotes into it.<p>Excellent stuff!

For a free alternative I recommend MacDown<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;uranusjr&#x2F;macdown" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;uranusjr&#x2F;macdown</a>

Similar but not identical is our Developer&#x27;s Daily Journal <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;devarist.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;devarist.com</a>

oh man, i would 1000% buy this if there was a linux version. looks great, has great functionality, but i don&#x27;t use osx anymore for development :(

Question: is there a way to clip websites to it? This is a feature I use a <i>lot</i> in Evernote that I&#x27;d sorely miss.

This does look great! Start-up time is super fast.<p>Is there a way to nest notebooks? That&#x27;s actually pretty important to me.

So it is pretty much evernote with different way of storing notes

it would be nice if you could customize the cursor movements. block travel is something I find essential for editing with atom&#x2F;sublime.

I thought it would actually run your code.

&quot;The Mac Programmer&#x27;s Notebook&quot;

The Apple monoculture is strong with this one. When will trendy developer startups realize other environments exist besides iOSX?

looks great, but desktop app are so 2000! I would start working on a web version if I were you.

You guys should watch this repo <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;niftylettuce&#x2F;seuss.md" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;niftylettuce&#x2F;seuss.md</a> (nothing yet, but just watch it ;)

Mac only? Not open source? Consider this a downvote.

Notebook<p>noun<p>1. Paper notebook<p>2. Laptop<p>3. Apparently another fucking thing as well now.

I use a pencil and paper.