Work in progress!
Existing notebook apps (such as Evernote) have diverse shortcomings. A note-taking application is probably open all the time so it shouldn’t get in the way, should be lightweight, encourage and make it easy to take (and later look up!) notes. This implies great searchability.
Furthermore, notes are taken in various ways. The application should facilitate that by supporting rich documents with as many formats as possible (HTML5 as document format?)
As a guiding principle, I quite like the idea and execution behind org-mode except for the fact that it’s got obvious limitations stemming from its implementation as a text editor plugin.
Microsoft Word 2011 (at least for Mac) also has a note-taking mode which puts the focus on logical markup and outline (something that is utterly lacking from products such as Evernote).
I’m unsure whether a smart client or web application is more suitable here. That said, if it’s realised as a web application it should definitely run chrome-less (i.e. not in a tab, without the overhead of a status bar and all that cruft) since that detracts from the essential design goal.
- Auto-save throughout, no manual saving required.
- Usable locally without internet connection.
- Clear UI
- Semantic markup, i.e. I mark up the notes using logical elements as in Markdown, not physical ones as in e.g. Evernote
- Export notes in different formats (e.g. HTML5, LATEX)
- Versioning (aka. infinite undo history with timestamps)
Essential features which are already present in current applications
- Indexed tags
- Cloud-based storage
- Timestamp for creation date & last change (and the ability to sort notes by either!)
- WYSIWYG1
- Ability to display multiple notes at the same time
No idea how useful this is …
- Sharing (individual notes, notebooks)
- Management of multiple notebooks
- Mobile apps (actually, this is probably essential but requires a lot more dev resources)
- Actually, I don’t care about that but pitching a text-only notebook app is probably impossible. If this is at all possible, then it should be based on org-mode (or function highly similarly).