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laurent22 / joplin

Joplin - the privacy-focused note taking app with sync capabilities for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS.
https://joplinapp.org
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[Feature Request] Don't require a title for notes, or use date/time instead of title #151

Closed vpopescu closed 6 years ago

vpopescu commented 6 years ago

Asking for a title for notes is a bit distracting. It would be nice if the "new note" would let me enter the node body, rather than ask for a title. Right now, every time I try to save a snippet of something, I have to rack my brain to give it a title. Google Keep does this, a "new note" focuses on the note body, with the title being optional.

I use apps such as these more like reminders of things I've seen. I just want to be able to paste a snippet into a text box, and have it indexed by date, so later on I can get a chronological list of my snippets. Similar to a ChangeLog organization, if you will.

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laurent22 commented 6 years ago

Yes this is actually partially implemented in the better-new-note branch. My plan is to get rid of the title prompt altogether and allow typing the note directly. The title will be, optionally, automatically populated based on the note body.

vpopescu commented 6 years ago

Great, will check it out.

What I was trying to find is an app that looks somewhat like this Day One view: http://dayoneapp.com/wp-content/uploads/DayOne-1-Graphics-1.jpg.

Maybe that would make a good view for the notes list, then I could collapse the note details, and just scroll and view my notes in that view (especially if it would show the full note). Hence the suggestion of using the date as the note title.

But I realize my needs are not everyone's needs. Some people love EverNote, I never got used to it, i find it messy. There is a strong need for this type of application, so thank you for the great work.

Should I close this, if it's already in plan, or do you plan to keep it open until the "better" branch is released?

jpetso commented 6 years ago

I think a "diary" (or "log") feature like you request would be intriguing, but I also appreciate having notes that are not tagged by date. If I have a notebook with recipes, or research on a particular topic, or even just a near-term to-do list, then I'd find the date a distraction and would rather have it sorted organizationally, maybe with manual reordering.

How about making it a property of the notebook? In the Android app, there could be an extra "Sort by..." button next to "Search", which would pop up a menu with items "By date" and "Manually". For "By date", a note could have the date shown on its side, like in @vpopescu's picture of Day One. For "Manually", instead of the date you could show a (vertical triple-dot) drag handle to let the user reorder the items. In the title bar, you can regain the lost space by removing the "Back" button (i.e. no empty start page after the initial notebook has been created) and putting "New Notebook" into the app menu.

Abijeet commented 6 years ago

I would like to add to this discussion my request here - https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/issues/166

laurent22 commented 6 years ago

This is done in the latest release - https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/releases/tag/v0.10.47

vpopescu commented 6 years ago

@jpetso I don't want to design the diary feature since I'm not the only customer and my needs may not align with the goal of the project, but what you are proposing would help. But the way it is now, it still requires me to "visit" (click on) each note to see the full note, instead of simply sitting back and scrolling through all my notes to read them using just the scroll bar or scroll wheel). So just sorting would not help, since I have to click on each note.

My ideal workflow would be something like this:

  1. Click on tray icon, select "Add new note". A small interface pops up (not the full interface) where I can write my note. Click and close it. (btw, would be nice if this would also work on linux/gnome!). (this is something OneNote got right, you don't need OneNote open on your desktop all the time, just the little tray app to add a new note)

  2. When I want to review my "diary" I can open the full app, where I have some sort of view where I see my history of all notes I added, as a chronological list, latest at top, with as little other fluff as possible, and no need to click on notes one by one to review them. (a pretty version of Emacs ChangeLog, basically)

Maybe a scripting/CLI interface would allow people to create the "add new note" and the "view journal" as external add-on, while using joplin as the engine. Then everyone could implement their own workflow. Something as simple as:

Add a note: joplin --add-note "note data as whatever encoding"

Get diary: joplin --get-all-notes --order-by-date-desc

Btw DayOne also sacrifices usability for layout (their notes are limited to three lines.. if you want to see more, it looks like you still have to click on the note)

laurent22 commented 6 years ago

@vpopescu, with the terminal app you can actually do more custom things. For example:

Add a note with title "my note" and body "note body":

joplin mknote "my note"
joplin set "my note" body "note body"

Get the last 10 notes by date:

joplin ls --sort updated_time --reverse --limit 10

See command usage for the full list of commands and arguments: http://joplin.cozic.net/terminal/