Within the past few months, every one of these has been deemed the best thing since sliced bread. As soon as I try to figure one out, something else (better?) comes along.
Is there anyone who would like to try to tackle making some sense out of this?
Isolate yourself from that noise, every day another tool is developed, but that does not necessarily mean it is a better tool. Each tool has its pros and cons, and will eventually fall short of one feature or another. So do not ride the hype of those tools.
For example, I am still using the boring Evernote, because itās doing the job right. Should I switch to Notion, probably, but I tried and ended up going back to Evernote, because Notion is the slowest piece of software, and it has a different way of managing the notes.
Should I switch to Obsidian, probably, because everyone is raving about it? Is it easy to move my Evernote date to Obsidian, I am not sure and probably will be difficult and not supporting attachments as much as I would like.
What about DevonThink or others? They are all valid options but none of them was right for me. So I am still using the same Evernote that almost everyone hates. And I still believe itās the only n application that is doing the job right.
Back to the tools you mentioned.
Craft is more of Document management system that is heavy on collaboration. Itās competing Google Docs, but it has a very similar structure to notion and DynaList, where everything is managed in a small block. I am trying it today for the first time, not sure if I will continue to like it, but letās see.
Agenda is a very nice note taking application in a calendar view, so it is giving the time context of your notes. Do you really need it? I am not sure, for me Drafts is a better alternative, because I personally canāt recall on which day I was taking the note. Still itās a very a good application.
Obsidian: is a research management tool, itās nice and free, but not necessarily ready for everyone. I might be subscribing to Obsidian now to benefit from the reduced early adopter pricing, But not necessarily committing to it fully yet.
I have another 100 tools, that I can mention here. Just ignore all of that, and use the old boring technology that proved to be working for you (and specifically YOU), and you feel most efficient and performing while using it.
Thanks. Thatās some great advice. Find something that is good enough and stay with it and avoid always looking for something that is newer, better, faster, etc. (The essence of that probably would have saved me 3 marriages!)
You give a pretty good synopsis of the strengths of each of the apps I mentioned. I was using Agenda fairly extensively, so maybe Iāll stick with that until something that is clearly better for my needs comes along.
However, Iāll reserve final judgment until some more comments are posted.
Work on your process, then find a tool that works reasonably well. If you arenāt happy at some point, work on your process more.
Tool-hopping seems to be a symptom of under-developed processes (or boredom).
I think in most cases when people start writing about a āgreat new appā, they mean āgreat new app for this work that I doā. So, itās probably helpful to just follow along the threads for a while to see what the facts are, and maybe look at the developerās web site to see if the shiny new thing is actually going to do something useful for you. And do it better, faster, easier than what you already do, at a price you can afford.
So many great perspectives above. Ultimately, there is no perfect tool so once youāve decided upon your system, as @JohnAtl recommended, determine your priorities and accept that youāll have to deal with compromises.
For me, my priorities are:
Shouldnāt become obsolete, avoid proprietary systems
Should be easily searchable
Should be editable
Easily accessible on many devices
Should support images and tables and maybe basic formatting
Linkable to one another (manually is fine)
Because of this, I dumped Evernote (proprietary but meets all the rest) and went with markdown files on DropBox. I can access these with Ulysses or Obsidian, but Iāve lost the ability to embed images (which is a big pain point) and markdown tables are difficult to create and read.
Figure out what the tool is for and go from there. Good luck!
PS: My idea tool would read and write markdown files but display rich text (limited to what markdown can do) and would also show images.
Obsidian desktop and mobile (and, soon, DEVONthink 3 desktop) supports image and file embedding and transclusion in markdown documents. In both cases, visible in Previews or, if necessary, when the document is printed or exported to PDF. In my mind, thatās a superior integration that will be very useful.
I agree that markdown tables suck. TableFlip helps ā but is clunky to use.
As I understand it, you can only see the embedded images when you look at the preview, but not while writing it. Most of my documents never get turned to PDF or other formats. They just stay in text. If it could show the image while writing, but save it as an extra file with a markdown image embed, Iād be very happy. I hope Iām missing something here that could be a fortuitous and happy fix!
Actually found Typora.io searching for āWYSIWYG Markdown Editor.ā This seems like itād be a good interim program while waiting for Obsidianās WYSIWYG editor. Wondering why I never heard of it, I searched it on this forum and only found it mentioned sporadically. Is there a reason why people may not like this? It seems pretty close to what I was hoping for: the confluence of all my wishes!
Yes thatās what I stipulated in my post. Thatās pretty common with markdown editors.
OTOH, Typora is a ālive previewā editor. Combines edit and preview modes into the same display.
Like everything else with markdown, thereās no standard and the same terminology is used with different meanings depending on the developer an how they chose to market their apps.
For example, DEVONthink added āWYSIWYGā features to its edit mode ā but all it does is render **bold** as **bold**. IMO, thatās rā¦eā¦aā¦lā¦y stretching what most people consider āWYSIWYGā .
True, though there are some editors that donāt even do that. Or indent text in an asteriskād list.
To me this seems like the best of best worlds! I get to read/edit a document with embedded images (which the text may be describing), but everything is saved as markdown. I hope this is a rising trend.
Is there an iOS live preview markdown editor?
EDIT: Looks like the new Bear.app alpha, called Panda, does this as well. The only thing it doesnāt do is sync with DropBox. And I donāt know about backlinks etc.
I vote for twitter. One reason I donāt use Twitter, or any other SM for that matter, is that I find that people are more often āscreamingā at rather than talking with each other. Not to take this thread off the rails ā¦
Dialogue is a lost art among most people today. If you agree with me, thereās no need for dialogue (or the dialogue is more like a āunilogueā). If you disagree with me, I donāt want to talk about it with you.
(Since I started this topic, I can amend it as I wish. I grant others permission to do the sameā¦subject to the wishes of God the Moderator, of course.)
Itās known, and itās indeed a great app. Kourosh Dini thoroughly endorses it in his DEVONthink book. However, there is some worry as to the speed of its development and whether it will be able to remain competitive in a space where the fight is very fierce.