djot VS Joplin

I know this doesn't solve your problem directly, but I recommend people to try out Djot[0], a markup language from the author of CommonMark.

Djot has a single well-defined spec, and most of the basic formatting has the same syntax as (a) Markdown, so switching is pretty painless. It has as a main goal to be legible and visually aesthetic as-is, just like Markdown.

What Djot adds is its _predictability_. Nested formatting, precedence order, line breaks behavior, nested blocks, mixed inline and block formatting, custom attributes are all laid out precisely in the spec in a thought-out manner. Till this day I still can't remember how to put line break within a list item in Markdown (and I'm sure there're more than one way).

[0]: https://djot.net/

Worth noting that the author has also created a markup language, djot.

https://github.com/jgm/djot

Every time I see people doing something with Markdown, I wish they just replace it with support for Djot[0] instead. It is a Markdown alternative by the creator of Pandoc and CommonMark that fixes all of the most egregious mistakes, while being legible and visually pleasant as-is. It is also syntactically similar to Markdown, which should ease adoption.

[0] https://github.com/jgm/djot

Are you using markdown? It might make sense to look at 'djot' as well: https://djot.net/; it's a new 'light' markup language conceived as a successor to commonmark; development is led by none other than John McFarlane (author of pandoc, & also led commonmark standardization) Djot makes it really easy to attach arbitrary attributes to block elements as well as inline elements; and the parser records source positions in the output -- all of which makes it really convenient keeping track of elements changing position or value.

I have a simple script that sends a djot buffer (https://github.com/jgm/djot) to the parser, if there's a change, on the CursorHold event.

Since you mentioned you were considering moving to CommonMark, have you had time to look into Djot (also by jpm)? Djot is meant to be easier to parse, and I'm planning to write a tree-sitter grammar for it.

Another recent development here is https://djot.net/ (by the pandoc author). It indeed thoroughly solves both:

I've had great success with using Joplin for this, with Syncthing as a sync backend. Works well across OSes; I use it on Linux, macOS, Windows and Android.

https://joplinapp.org/

The tools to manipulate SQL aren't that bad, no.

But rather than having a self explanatory markdown & flat file, now I have to start learning about the schema & making specific tools (in my preferred language) for manipulating Joplin's schema.

Suddenly I'm digging through 20 different technic specs to decode what data is where, how it works, and what I can do to it. Want to edit history? This is the best help you'll get, pray it's adequately technical to expedite you to your purpose: https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/blob/dev/readme/dev/spec...

As I began with, I struggle to imagine anything that generates anywhere near as much user agency as flat files and markdown. Having boring common data & systems lets me apply portable skills I already have, rather than having to skill up in some particular product's own ecosystem.

Joplin is a good open source option too, feels more like the original Evernote in terms of UI/UX https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/

Joplin, an open source, extendable, Markdown-based hierarchical note-taking app: https://joplinapp.org/

It lets you choose a synchronization backend, offers applications for every major desktop and mobile OS (also has a terminal version). You can create notebooks and subnotebooks to organize your notes. You can also add tags for better search experience. I created notebooks for specific domains (work-related, home improvement, etc.) and also keep a "temp" for quick notes and W.I.P. snippets.

Its only con that it uses Electron on desktop which causes relatively slow start of the application.

done