Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
My memory is not good. Well, that’s not strictly true: I seem to have ‘selective memory’ in so much as I can remember that one of my friends owes me thirty quid, but when it comes to things like coding or debating an argument, I can only remember stuff that I’ve either learned very recently or that I use often, so it’s a little like computer RAM, I suppose: it needs a constant refresh or the information will fade away.
Information storage and retrieval systems have always been one of the driving forces for my computer usage and I’ve used many different ones over the years. I love relational databases and the way in which information can be linked in a logical way, but maintaining that kind of a system can become a burden, so I looked for an easier way to organise the information that I found to be either interesting or useful and discovered note-taking apps.
There are many such apps from which to choose and I’ve used a good deal of them. I know, from my experience, that any note-taking app that one commits to using, needs to be the right one from the get-go, because over time, one will invest a huge amount of time in creating and maintaining a notes system.
Migrating to an alternative system is not always easy and can, once again, require a huge amount of work and time, depending on how many ‘notes’ have been created. Since I started using Notable, I have created about 200 note files and I still have about as many again that I created with Keepnote (the app that I used previously) that I have yet to bring over.
As of the time of writing, Notable is in development and there are two versions. v1.8.4 is the stable release and can be downloaded from https://notable.app/ While it’s perfectly usable, it does lack some of the features, as well as the look, that makes the newer version of the app so much more appealing. That newer version is v1.9.0-beta.10 and it can be downloaded from https://github.com/notable/notable-insiders/releases/tag/v1.9.0-beta.10
I was a little apprehensive about using a beta version, but so far (during the past 5 weeks of use), I’ve not encountered any major bugs and the new features and layout are just so compelling, but it’s your choice.
Notable does not tie you into a system from which it is impossible to escape. Your notes are basically Markdown tagged text files and as such, if you do need to migrate your notes to an alternative system, that process should be a relatively simple task.
A commitment to using Notable is essentially a commitment to using Markdown for your notes system, so if you’re new to Markdown, you’ll not know how extremely useful that markup language can be. As this feature is about Notable, I’ll not go in to any details about Markdown itself, suffice to say: Markdown is a lightweight markup language used for creating formatted text, using a plain-text editor and the Markdown that Notable uses will render LaTeX expressions, Mermaid diagrams and HTML, all of which you can mix and use in a single .md file. In general, if a text format is supported by Markdown, then you can use it in your Notable .md document file.
These .md files are created by Notable and creating a new note is as easy as it is with any other app (Ctrl+n). Notable does have a built-in editor, but if you’d prefer to use a chosen text editor, Notable can open the .md file with whatever your default application is for that file type, so don’t set Notable as your default application for that file type; set it to whatever your favourite text editor may be.
You can simply create a .md file with or without Notable running and the next time Notable is run, it will recognise the added file and handle it, by which I mean: Notable will add a header field to the file, which contains information such as the note’s creation and modification date and time.
Note files are organised in /notes/ directories (AKA: Data Directories) and you can have as many or as few of these directories and .md files as you need. Think of each data directory as being a ‘notebook’ and each .md file being a ‘page’ within said ‘notebook’.
Some links that you may want to check into:
https://www.markdownguide.org/
https://towardsdatascience.com/the-ultimate-markdown-cheat-sheet-3d3976b31a0
https://ghost.org/changelog/markdown/
https://www.fabriziomusacchio.com/blog/2021-08-10-How_to_use_LaTeX_in_Markdown/
One major difference that I’ve noticed between the two Notable versions that I’ve used, is that with v1.8.4 a note’s title needs to be added with a line of HTML code (for example: <title>Dunder Methods</title>). Without that simple HTML code line the note’s title (as displayed by the app title bar) defaults to ‘index.md’.
That HTML tag is not required if you use a later version of the app and (so far as I can tell) any notes that were created with that tag remain forward-completable, although the tag is not needed. I have many notes that were created before I began to use the beta version and I’ve seen no issues so far. I’ve not removed the HTML tag from any of my notes, that way, if I do revert back to using the older version of Notable, I will not have to recreate those tags.
There is a very active Notable discord community at https://discord.com/channels/715934079559663646 from which you can get any help/support you may need. Reading through the posts there is a good way of discovering a little about the developer and where this project is heading, which is certainly something that I like to know about.
From what I understand, behind Notable is Typescript: Notable is basically a web app wrapped in Electron and effectively includes elements from (if not a copy of) the Chromium browser, to render the UI.
If you need access to your notes across different machines, right now, you’ll need to get creative with a system of your own, which could be as simple as using a USB thumb drive, or a more complex solution, such as Syncthing (https://docs.syncthing.net/index.html).
Moving forward, there could very well be more features added to Notable, such as sharing notes across multiple devices or even multiple users. Fabio says “Pretty much the entire app is written with plugins in mind, I just haven't exposed APIs yet.” so there is the potential for an ecosystem of plugins to arise and who knows what added features would result from that. One that I would like to see, would auto-link notes that include some ‘keyword’. If you’ve used Tomboy Notes (or even Keepnote) you’ll understand how useful such a feature can be.
Notable is the best note-taking app that I have used and even if the project goes in a direction that is counter to my own needs and ethos, I know that, least ways, I can still use v1.8.4, as I have been, for the past few years. My feeling (from what I’ve seen and learned from the discord channel) is that this project is worth following and I hope to be using Notable for many years to come.