What is a good note taking app?

[sceppi]

I’m not an IT/programming expert, nor have any education in it. Despite this, I’ve educated myself quite well using this (and plenty other) communities.

I’ve been taking notes with code snippets, own comments, explanations, links to sites, etc … by using microsoft WORD.

Needless to say, Word is by far not ideal to take notes which contains programming language.

So my question is: What note taking program would you recommend? Preferably free or open source and should be able to run on windows.

[rpwong (Russ)]

This post doesn’t have a lot to do with openHAB, so I suggest giving it the “Off topic” topic to avoid others coming after you for that. I’d also make it clear that you’re talking about keeping notes specific to your openHAB development.

I’m still mostly using text files for configuration, so I just leave comments in my files. I have no plans to move my rules over, specifically because I like leaving comments throughout my rules. Thinking about it some more, perhaps it would be worthwhile to have a multi-line “Notes” field in UI items and rules, so that people can add notes without limitation.

[psyciknz]

Any links or anything I get from the openhab site with code snippets etc, I’ll put in evernote…only because everything else is.

And since I also use code files, I do have a lot of comments in my items and rule files for explanation.

[chrismast (chris)]

I mostly use ECMA code scripts which have annotations and log entry lines for me to follow.
Other stuff i document in my self hosted wiki.js wiki (i.e. docker compose for my various LXC containers etc.).

[Aitchy (Harry Mutch)]

I use Joplin https://joplinapp.org/ to create a personal wiki for all those things I do irregularly. Its cross platform, uses Markdown and handles code formatting well. It also syncs across my various systems and gadgets.

[sceppi]

@rpwong

This post doesn’t have a lot to do with openHAB, so I suggest giving it the “Off topic” topic to avoid others coming after you for that. I’d also make it clear that you’re talking about keeping notes specific to your openHAB development.

It’s indeed related to keeping notes about the openHAB environment, although the note taking could of course be used in any kind of environment. I’ve specifically posted this in the off-topic category, and have also added the off-topc tag now

@Aitchy

I use Joplin https://joplinapp.org/ to create a personal wiki for all those things I do irregularly. Its cross platform, uses Markdown and handles code formatting well. It also syncs across my various systems and gadgets.

This is indeed the kind of app that I am looking for. Any other suggestions are welcome

[rlkoshak (Rich Koshak)]

This is probably going to be beyond what most can manage but I’ll post it here, perhaps as it might give some good ideas to those who can manage it.

I like markdown, mostly because it’s how the docs for OH are written, and a reduced set of it are used for writing on this forum and on GitHub. So, just as with a post here on the forum, I can put code fences around code or commands and it will format it just like here on the forum.

```
code goes here
```

I’ve a self hosted instance of NextCloud and tend to use their markdown text editor for keeping notes. However, I’ve found myself moving beyond needing most of my notes these days.

Task	What I do instead of separate notes
Setting up computers and software	Ansible playbooks and roles. Installation, configuration, and any other changes needed to a stock OS install gets done via Ansible. That way I don’t need notes because I don’t have to remember how I did it before. I can just run the Ansible role again and it will reconfigure the machine just like it did the last time.
Updates	I use the same Ansible playbooks to update my machines.
openHAB Rules	In OH 3 I’ve started to make heavy use of Scripts. Any time I figure something out (how to create a timer, import the logger, call executeCommandLine, etc.) I’ll create a Script with the code that does it. I actually have more Scripts than Rules. I take lots of inline notes in these Scripts and I can copy/paste from them into my Rules as needed.
Larger How Tos and Tutorials	I write posts here on the forum to share how to do something and book mark it so I can find it again. This way not only is it captured but it’s shared with the wider world who can also benefit.
Everything else	MD formatted notes on NextCloud. Joplin uses MD too.

As I develop my openHAB config, I use git and try to apply meaningful comments when I check stuff in.

All of the above combined gives me enough documentation I need. The Ansible stuff is truly life changing in terms of flexibility and “documenting” how all my machines are set up. If I need to completely rebuild my OH instance from scratch, all I have to do is issue a couple of commands and it’s done. I don’t have to remember how to create the InfluxDB databases or how to set a username and password and certificate for Mosquitto or any of that. Ansible just does it.