Record Markdown Notes and Code Snippets Using Boostnote
Ryan Cordell
Many of my recent posts have focused on how I've increasingly turned to Markdown for my writing, syllabus design, project and class websites, and for teaching literate programming. For those unfamiliar, Markdown is a convention for writing in plain text while encoding the structure of your document—headers, block quotes, lists, footnotes, etc.—using simple typographic characters. One advantage of Markdown is its portability: moving a project from one Markdown-aware application to another is a simple cut and paste operation, with none of the formatting challenges that can come when moving between rich text environments. Because of that, I've been on the lookout for awhile for a new note-taking application for use in less formal situations, for jotting down ideas during talks, committee work, and so forth. I've always found Evernote too full featured—because it seeks to let users save anything, I found the resulting mishmash hard to navigate. As a mac user, OneNote just isn't on my radar. For years I've used Notational Velocity, which syncs with Simplenote, and it's fine. It allows me to take fast, text-only notes and access them from any of my devices. It does not prevent me using Markdown syntax, but it doesn't exactly support Markdown either. Last year Amy chose Notability, which looks far more flexible for those who want to sketch and annotate, but that wasn't really what I was looking for. Fortunately, a randomly-inspired Google search (something like, scrivener but for markdown notes ) brought me to Boostnote, which I've been experimenting with happily for about a week now. Boostnote is a text-based note taking application with a simple folder structure for organizing categories. I like the relative simplicity of its interface and I like the focus on just text based notes. Like Macdown, Boostnote is Markdown aware, meaning it recognizes Markdown syntax, will autocomplete some features (such as adding a new list item when you hit Enter within a list), and it will preview a lightly rendered version of your Markdown document, so you can see how your encoding would be displayed in a web browser. There are two ways of managing the preview pane, and I particularly like the option to make the preview appear when I right click. This means the preview stays out of the way most of the time, but can be summoned when needed. Boostnote bills itself as the note-taking app for programmers, and that tagline hints at its other great feature (for me, at least): the ability to store code snippets. For the language it recognizes—and there are more than 100 it does—Boostnote will highlight the syntax in code snippets, making them easy to read and work with. I don't need to record code snippets as often as someone who works in programming every day, but I do have a small store of such snippets sent to me by collaborators and students and I'm glad to have an application that can store them more effectively than as text alone. My experience with Boostnote thus far hasn't been perfect. The application syncs through an existing service like Google Drive or Dropbox. Essentially, you choose to store your notes via, say, Dropbox and then link any other computers' Boostnote installations to that same folder. This is somewhat awkward but totally understandable for a free application. It's more of a problem in the mobile application. Though I've connected the mobile app to my Dropbox before, when I load it again it defaults to local storage. I have to select Dropbox from the menu. When I choose Dropox, Boostnote seems to reload all of my notes anew, rather than storing notes and syncing just those that have changed. This makes Boostnote's mobile client far less useable than I'd wish, and certainly note the application I would open if I needed to record something quickly. The mobile application also seems to organize the notes hierarchically and include no option to easily navigate the folders that are so neatly organized in the desktop app, or to search for particular notes. For now, I'm very happy with Boostnote on the desktop. The ability to write notes in Markdown and then port them (when ready) to other Markdown apps is a huge boon. I do hope the mobile app could add some basic usability improvements, such as implementing search. Despite these mobile quibbles, I do expect to use Boostnote as my primary desktop notes app for awhile. How about you? Tell us about your favorite note-taking application in the comments. Creative Commons licensed photo by Flickr user vlowe_ktm. |
