cross-posted from: https://fosstodon.org/users/notesnook/statuses/114059550980301173
Choose your warrior:
- @StandardNotes
- @[email protected] ๐ก๏ธ
- @joplinapp
All of these are open source, private and encrypted. Of course, Notesnook is still the best ๐
#notetaking, #privacy, #security, #notesnook, #opensource
I still use a pen and notebook. But I have an excuse: I prefer pen and paper to write (and I'm starting to get old too) ;)
The only digital note taking app I still use is the one that comes with the E2EE filen.io cloud storage, from Germany. It certainly is very limited but it's more than enough for my occasional note-taking usage and it's synced everywhere I may need to access it.
I use a pocket notebook for my weekly "todo" list type notes. I have a Obsidian vault for long term documentations and projects and stuff like that. I tried doing everything in obsidian but between having to pull out my phone, navigate to the app and then type on the shitty phone keyboard it was more troublesome than just carrying around actual notebook.
I'm 99% sure they ripped the note editing functionality from Standard Notes.
Which would upset me, except Standard Notes borrowed a lot of code for the editors from other people, and try to sell them back to you with a yearly license, even if you host your own server.
Not sure to understand, how could anyone 'rip' a note editing feature? Put text in a file (hopefully encrypted since it's online) is kinda the purpose of all note-taking app... which they all copied from their analog (and much older) version pen + paper. And the vast majority of them do it using Markdown, too. Even sync is available in most note-taking apps (with or without E2EE encryption), or do you have something a little more specific in mind they would have ripped?
That's one (other) reason I like filen: lifetime plans are available (the most interesting ones are offered for a limited-time once a year during blackfriday). No sub.
"Rip" is probably too crass a word. But there's a lot going on with fancy text editors written in JavaScript, just below the surface. They are much harder to build than you might expect!
Many of Standard Notes' editors are wrappers for open-source text editors that were created by somebody else*. Today, Standard Notes' premiere note type is the Super Note. It is also a wrapper around Facebook's Lexical Editor. (Since Lexical is MIT-licensed, SN can legally use it and charge people money.)
When I look at Filen's Note UI, it bears a striking resemblance to Standard Notes' advanced editors. It's also implemented in HTML on both mobile devices and its web interface. I'm reasonably certain they did not reinvent the wheel, and simply copied from Standard Notes in a way similar to how Standard Notes copied a bunch of third party plugins.
* Standard Notes charges you recurring fees for the privilege of using Super Notes, even if you shoulder the burden of self-hosting it. There is nothing unethical about reusing code from an open source project, but I have disdain for these fees, specially when SN could/should simply offer paid plans with the promise of convenience. This is how BitWarden and Ente make money without being hostile to self-hosted users: offering convenience as an option.