notable VS xournalpp

And I was confusing it with https://notable.app/

I tried many note-taking apps and finally settled on Notable[0]. It's simple and you can point it to a folder with markdown files and attachments. Plus, you can just sync the folder using any syncing service, and use Noteless[1] on Android. And the tagging support is superb.

Because of the simple folder structure, you can also use vim+fzf to search/navigate your notes. The notational-fzf-vim plugin[2] is superb for that.

For web-clipping, I just use the markdownload[3] extension in firefox and save the markdown file in the notes folder.

Why not joplin? Mostly because joplin stores notes in an sqlite database instead of a simple folder structure making it not easily accessible by normal unix tools and editors.

Why not obsidian? Was never able to grok obsidian. In notable, I can tag a note as Books/CS, and CS/Books, and it'll show up in corresponding folder-like structures in the left panel.

0. https://notable.app/

Oh and the dev also did his own comparison table - you might like to compare it to yours!

I use https://notable.app/ for my notes, backup the notes / setup on a private github repo which I share with the Mac / Linux versions I use. Been working really well.

Notable (Mac, Windows, Linux) (flat)

I highly recommend Rnote to anyone on Linux that misses the "hodgepodge" notetaking of apps like OneNote. It works like a dream on touchscreens and drawing tablets, with a surprising amount of configuration under the hood.

Also worth noting is Xournal, an older but similar project: https://xournalpp.github.io/

I've been using Xournalpp[1] for many years, highlighting books as I read them, adding in text/hand drawn annotations in whitespaces if necessary. Unlike other PDF readers/annotators, it saves a separate file, so the original PDF is untouched. It can also export the annotated PDF as a new PDF with highlights and annotations.

Obsidian[2] also has PDF support, where you can open a markdown document side by side with the PDF to take notes as you read. I think it also lets you highlight the PDF itself.

Emacs I think has a similar feature, via plugins/org-mode(?) to the Obsidian setup.

And of course your typical PDF reader probably has support for highlighting PDFs too, but I find them clunky and they save by exporting a PDF, which can be a bit heavy-handed IMO compared to just saving the annotations/highlights as a separate file as Xournalpp does.

[1]: https://github.com/xournalpp/xournalpp/

Currently, I am trying to build a small open source NLP project for which I first find text on a page and then translate it; see the current project state here: https://github.com/PellelNitram/xournalpp_htr. The purpose of this project is to make handwritten text in Xournal++ searchable for all users.

[Xournal++](https://xournalpp.github.io/) is in my option the best handwritten note-taking software out there, because it has all the coolest features (like LaTeX snippets and shapes) and it's open source too, so make sure to check it out!