I’ve been looking for a plug-in like this for quite some time and was hoping maybe you would have some experience with something like this. Please let me know if you run into anything. I truly enjoy reading your blog and I look forward to your new updates.

My web site; [water damage miami](http://viewen.com/profiles/104070/ “water damage in los angeles”)

That’s about it. To me, that’s minimalism.

Not only did I mark up my notes with the classic Markdown, I used MultiMarkdown, of which you probably heard as well. There was a Markdown-preview-enabled version of NV available for quite some time now, I just happen to have changed the interface even further. As long as I’m working on my own system, I could need every possible suggestion from folks who have a system set up and running successfully for some time already. If you find my MultiMarkdown version useful—and especially if you don’t!—, I’d love to hear your suggestions:

http://christiantietze.tumblr.com contains pictures and links to the download

“I’m inspired by your system and am currently tweaking my own as a result.”

Ut, oh, now I feel a sense of responsibility :-)

“Are you titling your notes in NV with the same naming convention you mentioned in your “File System Infobase Manager” post? (e.g. 090608-W2-File System Philosophy)”

Remember the crucial aspect (right now) is that I’ve only got current notes in NV and WR.IP, meaning a hundred or so – Not the 18,000+ notes all told I’ve accumulated.

I started naming them: date, code, name – I even set up TextExpander shortcuts (ddr = current date -R1-) but in WR.IP, in horizontal mode, I can’t see the file names. So now in NV or WR.IP I just add the R1-, N2-, T1- codes to the front of the file name, and some Markdown like @tags in the fist line of text for sorts.

This way I can see all the T1′s (which are my fiction thoughts files, the vast bulk of my flaneuring files) and if I need my notes for say. PostModernism class I can search on @TNSPMd, or just my New School notes: @TNS…Drafts of posts under development are T2- with a snip of text the file @PostDEV. That all lets me work inside the constraints of the iPhone.

Now there is a danger. Simpletext has, for whatever reason, once, overwritten all my notes, washing away the file creation date. Which is a major reason I code my file names the way I do. For those few dozen files, I’ll be few days off. Not a big deal in the grand scheme.

When I export notes I date them. (CMD R – then CMD E in Notational) If the pile is big, I use A Better File Renamer. It goes through the list and adds created date in yymmdd to the front of the file name.

My concept right now is I’m using WR.IP and NV to develop these notes a bit more than just the immediate capture. I find this valuable, the second or third go around, and it reminds me of re-writng pen and paper journal notes.

What might not be clear is that all my committed notes, that are not in the SimpleText folders are chronosynced to my iDisk, so I can, if I have to, get to an old note using the free iPhone iDisk application. As cool as that sounds, it happens like twice a month, and usually just when I’m showing off.

When I on the iPhone, I’m out, and that means my attention is very current: capture, edit fresh, review this morning’s drafts, and the like. The iPad may challenge that, but we’ll see.

“What tool are you using to convert your MarkDown to HTML? Do you find the need to do the same for PDF/DOC/etc? If so, do you have any issues having not used MultiMarkDown or does it gracefully upgrade?”

I’m only converting for Dougist.com. My WordPress install uses the Markdown Extra plug-in and works fine unless I use MORE for a post on the first page, then it breaks. I have to say I am thrilled writing in Markdown/MultiMarkdown. I used to go insane about the primitive state of technology every time I wrote out a a href= blagh, blagh, blagh and then I finally got what markdown was all about.

I haven’t leaned LaTeX or beamer yet, haven’t had the need, yet. If I never give another presentation I’ll be very happy.

“If you had unlimited space in SimpleText, would you keep all of your notes in NV or would you still reserve it for only current writing and file them away at some point?”

Well now there you go. That’s a good question. I’ve seen scrod’s posts about NV’s conceptual design. But right now I use it more as a local editor, and for that it is not only perfect, it is also a unique application.

I also have a crap load of rtfd’s, legacy of the Journler export function – .which are just fine in finder and quicklook – and more legacy Word docs, also very accessible in finder. So before I go all the way and do a conversion, I’m going to let a little time pass. I can troll through the old notes piles, pdf’s, jpeg’s and all, very nicely in finder. That gets me a subset of notes and then I start manipulating them in a current project, often in Scrivener, the output of which is very different than the input of the notes.

Right now I like the step in my work flow that has me fidigle with notes before committing them.

But ask me in month or so.

(Love your art work, by the way…and your site. It’s a great design!)

I’m inspired by your system and am currently tweaking my own as a result.

Questions for you:

1) Are you titling your notes in NV with the same naming convention you mentioned in your “File System Infobase Manager” post? (e.g. 090608-W2-File System Philosophy)

2) What tool are you using to convert your MarkDown to HTML? Do you find the need to do the same for PDF/DOC/etc? If so, do you have any issues having not used MultiMarkDown or does it gracefully upgrade?

3) If you had unlimited space in SimpleText, would you keep all of your notes in NV or would you still reserve it for only current writing and file them away at some point?

Thanks for sharing this with us, Beck

You can set up a *.odt file and then save it regularly as an html file for portability (keep everything on a thumbdrive or portable HD and use any box with a browser to work through and reference everything).

The master file has hyperlinks to all your text files. Unlike your filing system, these links can have any text whatsoever, though once you learn a system like yours, it’s best to keep those filenames as the link text. But OO.org gives you two additional benefits:

1. each link can include a brief paragraph describing what is in the ‘index card’ text file. This paragraph can include all the metadata you want, and it’s all in text form, not breakable like any particular OS-based metadata system.

2. you can include many different links to the one document, so you can cross-reference and file multiply to your heart’s content. You can also link internally from one reference to the other — so to your ‘brief descriptive paragraph’ you can add a list of all the different locations and references.

Using a full-on word processor gives you all the tools you want in Scrivener or Bean such as auto-correct, auto-capitalization, and dead-easy insertion of links. It would also give you the ability to go back to styling your note-card files; keep them all as html files with the simplest use of basic html 1.0 entities so the files are small, but have formatting.

Setting OO.org to reference links all ‘relative to file system’ should make the links portable across operating systems, but I haven’t tried this extensively — it has worked for me so far going back and forth between MS-Windows and Ubuntu Linux, but my Mac is an old iBook G4, and can’t keep up with NeoOffice anymore.

asotir

1. The architecture for whole shebang is based on a pile of text files, which is as simple as a dead mouse. The other obvious benefits of this, future proofing, flexibility, application agnosticism, are touched on above, but at its core we are talking about an architecture that has been around since we all have been computing, which for an old guy like me means decades.
2. Although complicated to describe, the system is, from the user’s perspective (that would be me again) crisp and clean, devoid of learning curve, bereft of unnecessary features and functions. All of the missing steps are what makes it minimalist; no fidigiling with file transfers, no wondering it DEVONThink can or will do such and such, no hunting for lost or corrupt data, no interface between applications. The ideas are captured, they are ready for editing, they can be expanded or synthesized. I could go on comparing it to the Benedictine like scrivenering skills necessary to manage a paper based systems, but my sense is you are speaking to the multiple technology components, so I’ll stick to them.

I don’t think it’s ever fair to confuse the engineering necessary to get to a minimalist experience with the experience itself. I’m having trouble thinking of a minimalist environment, that has any technological component to it, that does not rely on some pretty sophisticated back room magic. So long as the front end is religious about focusing the user on the core task and not on managing the system, it gets the minimalist check off from me.

My last note on this is the wonderful discussion that we could have, but that really belongs elsewhere, of minimalism as defined relative to the point of observation. Having caught up on my Buddhist teachings recently, I understand the argument that a more perfect minimalism could be achieved from the absence of all; no notes, no system, no use of symbolic language to communicate emotionals and ideas at all. I don’t want to go that far and I’ve decided to take refuge a little higher up the slippery slope. We are talking here about a note taking system in 2010, and the technology that surrounds it. So the POV is crucial to the tag, and given the state of info managers and application design today, I still stand by my minimalist label.

(Tor, I also think this system actually addresses your Design Commandments # 3, 5, 7, 8 and 10. – It’s a very good list, by the way)

It looks like Jesse has some tinkering to do when he gets back from camping. There are a few sync adjustments that are still necessary. The text always seems to be up on the simpletext web site, but sometimes “goes missing” on my local copy. I’d also love for NV to go WideMail with a landscape view, but I’m willing to wait for both, since the system works just fine now.

I have started to lean more on Notational Velocity than on the Finder/filesystem structures. I love NV’s service which makes it as simple as selecting text, right click, and select the service to immediately have that text popped into NV.

Also, instead of using SimpleText to sync notes to WriteRoom for iPhone, I use SimpleNote on the iPhone, which NV can now sync directly to. I also use Dropbox, which is where I keep my NV “Notations” for an extra level of back up, and because Dropbox has a history of your backups, so versioning is built in.