Scream! Craft...Agenda...Obsidian...Something Else

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?

Thanks.

Tony

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Hello,
Two things here.

  1. 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 itā€™s 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 itā€™s the only n application that is doing the job right.

  1. Back to the tools you mentioned.
    Craft is more of Document management system that is heavy on collaboration. Itā€™s 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 letā€™s 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 canā€™t recall on which day I was taking the note. Still itā€™s a very a good application.

Obsidian: is a research management tool, itā€™s 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.

Sorry for the wall of text reply here.

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Mina,

Thanks. Thatā€™s 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 Iā€™ll stick with that until something that is clearly better for my needs comes along.

However, Iā€™ll reserve final judgment until some more comments are posted.

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Work on your process, then find a tool that works reasonably well. If you arenā€™t happy at some point, work on your process more.
Tool-hopping seems to be a symptom of under-developed processes (or boredom).

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Confirming @minaā€™s and @JohnAtl 's advice.

I think in most cases when people start writing about a ā€œgreat new appā€, they mean ā€œgreat new app for this work that I doā€. So, itā€™s probably helpful to just follow along the threads for a while to see what the facts are, and maybe look at the developerā€™s 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 youā€™ve decided upon your system, as @JohnAtl recommended, determine your priorities and accept that youā€™ll have to deal with compromises.

For me, my priorities are:

  1. Shouldnā€™t become obsolete, avoid proprietary systems
  2. Should be easily searchable
  3. Should be editable
  4. Easily accessible on many devices
  5. Should support images and tables and maybe basic formatting
  6. 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 Iā€™ve 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.

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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, thatā€™s a superior integration that will be very useful.

I agree that markdown tables suck. TableFlip helps ā€“ but is clunky to use.

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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, Iā€™d be very happy. I hope Iā€™m missing something here that could be a fortuitous and happy fix!

This will happen with WYSIWYG mode, currently under development.

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Actually found Typora.io searching for ā€œWYSIWYG Markdown Editor.ā€ This seems like itā€™d be a good interim program while waiting for Obsidianā€™s 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!

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Yes thatā€™s what I stipulated in my post. Thatā€™s pretty common with markdown editors.

OTOH, Typora is a ā€˜live previewā€™ editor. Combines edit and preview modes into the same display.

Like everything else with markdown, thereā€™s 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 ā€œWYSIWYGā€ features to its edit mode ā€“ but all it does is render **bold** as **bold**. IMO, thatā€™s rā€¦eā€¦aā€¦lā€¦y stretching what most people consider ā€œWYSIWYGā€ .

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True, though there are some editors that donā€™t even do that. Or indent text in an asteriskā€™d 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 doesnā€™t do is sync with DropBox. And I donā€™t know about backlinks etc.

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Panda is just their spun-off testbed for their new editor engine it wonā€™t be a new app, but they are working on the overall experience.

One of their replies popped in my Twitter timeline some time ago. They have no plans yet for backlinks and they want to get the editor right, first.

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Just wanted to stop by to say that SCREAM! would be a great name for a notes app. Or maybe a twitter client.

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I vote for twitter. :slight_smile: One reason I donā€™t use Twitter, or any other SM for that matter, is that I find that people are more often ā€œscreamingā€ at rather than talking with each other. :slight_smile: Not to take this thread off the rails ā€¦

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Indeed. And your process should be as tool agnostic as possible, imho.

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Like another popular Apple forum. :upside_down_face:

I believe that name was once used as a Twitter parody in a video game. I donā€™t remember the name of the video game though. :thinking:

ā€œI wrote a screech about that.ā€

ā€œI screeched about that.ā€

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Well, Iā€™m glad I wasnā€™t completely off the reservation. :slight_smile:

Dialogue is a lost art among most people today. If you agree with me, thereā€™s no need for dialogue (or the dialogue is more like a ā€œunilogueā€). If you disagree with me, I donā€™t 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.)

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Itā€™s known, and itā€™s 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.

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