I Still Use Plain Text for Everything.

1. ledger

   1 107 6,031 9.8 C++

   Double-entry accounting system with a command-line reporting interface

   

   It seems like plain text has made a comeback among the generation that remembers Notepad and vim. I've been putting together a collection of plain text applications:

   plain text todo / notes combination [https://jeffhuang.com/productivity_text_file/]

   plain text accounting [https://github.com/ledger/ledger]

   plain text academic publishing [http://www.sitzextase.de/blog/2017/02/22/plain-text/]

   plain text organizer [https://danlucraft.com/blog/2008/04/plain-text-organizer/]

   plain text daily diary [https://georgecoghill.wordpress.com/2018/01/01/the-one-line-...]

2. Kargo

   akuity.io sponsored

   Stop Scripting Promotions. Start Shipping with Kargo. Kargo automates promotion across dev, staging, and prod with approval gates and verification. Open source, built by the team behind Argo CD. Download now.

   

3. QOwnNotes

   2 71 5,870 9.8 C++

   QOwnNotes is a plain-text file notepad and todo-list manager with Markdown support and Nextcloud / ownCloud integration.

   

   My absolute favorite hierarchical note application is CherryTree (https://www.giuspen.com/cherrytree), but there's no mobile support, and looks like there will never be.

   I migrated all my notes to QOwnnotes (https://www.qownnotes.org) synchronized with DropBox, and use any markdown editor in mobile. I would be happier if it had encryption, but even if it had, a compatible mobile editor would be hard to find.

4. CherryTree

   3 59 3,942 9.3 C++

   cherrytree

   

   My absolute favorite hierarchical note application is CherryTree (https://www.giuspen.com/cherrytree), but there's no mobile support, and looks like there will never be.

   I migrated all my notes to QOwnnotes (https://www.qownnotes.org) synchronized with DropBox, and use any markdown editor in mobile. I would be happier if it had encryption, but even if it had, a compatible mobile editor would be hard to find.

5. foam

   4 53 17,390 9.6 TypeScript

   A personal knowledge management and sharing system for VSCode

   

   I love plain text for my digital note-taking and I use a Foam [1] workspace now, but I've always struggled with diagrams. I love pencil and paper because I have complete freedom to draw diagrams which can be incredibly useful. I'd love a note-taking application for Android which lets me write text and then add a 'canvas block' to draw, and then switch back to text.

   [1] https://foambubble.github.io/

6. zk

   5 2 12 5.9 Go

   

   Wrote my own vaguely Zettelkasten-inspired system because I wanted something that works at the command line and followed my own idiosyncratic (or idiotic) preferences. The data lives in my keybase KBFS mount and I symlink it into my home directory.

   You build up a hierarchy of notes, but you can also cross-link so a note appears in multiple places. You can also drop arbitrary files alongside any given note. I expand it occasionally as I need new features; most recently I added regular expression searching and a command to locate "orphaned" notes. It's at https://github.com/floren/zk which contains the Go library to interact with the files on disk, and a command-line tool which wraps the library.

7. orgmode

   6 102 3,874 8.4 Lua

   Orgmode clone written in Lua for Neovim 0.11.0+.

   

   I saw this new Org mode port for NeoVim[1].

   I wouldn't expect this to be anywhere near feature complete but for an old vim hand like me it's interesting.

   I'm a big fan of VimWiki personally but I'm in awe of some of the Org-mode demos I've seen.

   1. https://github.com/kristijanhusak/orgmode.nvim

8. med

   7 7 92 1.8 D

   Micro Emacs in D

   

   I fixed my editor so that it recognizes URLs, and underlines them. Clicking on one brings up a browser on that site. I should have done that 20 years ago.

   No special syntax is required. It just works. I've since been adding URLs in comments all over my code, for references. It's marvelous.

   It could be extended to recognize filename.jpg and filename.mp3 to display or play those files, too. Again with no special syntax whatsoever. It just works.

   https://github.com/DigitalMars/med

9. AppSignal

   www.appsignal.com sponsored

   AppSignal knows why the f*#k it crashed. Stop vibe-debugging. Every exception, every backtrace, grouped so you see patterns, not noise.

   

10. notes.sh

    8 1 22 0.0 Shell

    Discontinued Plain-text notes with IMAP synchronization

    There is an alternative: you can use a MIME envelope to store notes. This way you’ll have a plaintext container and a way to attach files in a portable way.

    I’ve built a note taking system based on this idea: https://github.com/knazarov/notes.sh

11. hledger

    9 95 4,704 9.9 Haskell

    Robust, fast, intuitive plain text accounting tool with CLI, TUI and web interfaces.

    

    +1 for plain text accounting. I'm using hledger^[0] to track my finances. I do use the web UI to submit information but I edit the plain text store extensively.

    [0]: https://hledger.org/

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