[HN Gopher] Show HN: Heynote - A dedicated scratchpad for develo...
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Show HN: Heynote - A dedicated scratchpad for developers
Hey! I made Heynote entirely for my own use case. For many years,
I always had an Emacs instance running with the scratch buffer
open, even long after I had abandoned Emacs as my programming
editor in favor of more recent IDE:s. The simplicity of having
just one big scratch buffer appeals to me, but I still want to
separate the different things I jot down somehow (without using
tabs or similar). Previously, my solution was to insert a bunch of
blank lines between the notes, but hitting C-A would still select
the entire buffer. That's why I came up with the concept of
"blocks", which turned out really well for my use cases. I decided
to release Heynote, thinking it might be useful to others.
Author : jonatanheyman
Score : 654 points
Date : 2023-12-22 13:33 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (heynote.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (heynote.com)
| jonatanheyman wrote:
| I'd love to get some feedback also :).
|
| Heynote Github Repo: https://github.com/heyman/heynote
| danpalmer wrote:
| Hey! Nice app, I've always had scratch pads around for things
| like this and never had a particularly good solution for them.
| Soulver is nice but too maths focused, a tab in VSCode in nice
| but it's a pain to manage multiple buffers for different
| languages. I like the feature set here.
|
| A few bits of feedback for potential improvements or
| clarifications...
|
| - I couldn't find the shortcut to change the language until I
| hovered over the status bar element for it. It should have a
| menu item with the keyboard shortcut on it.
|
| - Toggling light/dark mode doesn't live in the status bar in
| any other app I know, probably best to put it in settings.
|
| - Doesn't respect the system light/dark mode, it should by
| default (but perhaps with an app specific override as some
| people like that).
|
| - Check for update doesn't live in the status bar either in any
| other app I've used, this could be in settings.
|
| - If there's not enough stuff to put in a status bar, maybe
| drop the status bar? It feels like things have been scraped
| together to justify having it.
|
| - The green branding is ok, but it's quite a strong personality
| for an app to have. Do you want the app to have a strong
| personality? (Nothing else about it suggests so). Perhaps
| consider a more neutral palette that fits in with macOS more,
| or perhaps several choices for accent colour including a
| neutral option.
|
| - 427MB is huge. Thankfully it's not particularly memory hungry
| at least with small documents, but damn that's a big bundle for
| what it is. Why is it bundling ffmpeg? Does it really need
| GLES? Is a base Electron framework really >300MB?
|
| - Options for a keymap, but after deleting the initial content
| I've lost the actual keymap! Would be great to have a help
| reference in the app, or at least a docs page on the website
| that the help menu links to.
|
| - Would be great to be able to change the font.
|
| - I don't understand the saving model. Where is the data saved?
| Can I control this? Is saving necessary? If not, how often is
| the data persisted? Can I put it in cloud storage so it syncs
| across machines, or if it does this already, can I opt-out of
| that?
|
| - Not personally a fan of putting the name of the app in the
| icon. Most apps don't, I'd suggest something more subtle.
| perryraskin wrote:
| I agree re the app icon - it would look great and still
| unique by simply removing the name.
| jonatanheyman wrote:
| > I couldn't find the shortcut to change the language until I
| hovered over the status bar element for it. It should have a
| menu item with the keyboard shortcut on it.
|
| Noted. Will fix!
|
| > Doesn't respect the system light/dark mode, it should by
| default (but perhaps with an app specific override as some
| people like that)
|
| The light/dark toggle has three states. Light/Dark/Whatever
| the system is set to (default). If it's set to the third
| mode, it _should_ respect the system mode. Otherwise it 's a
| bug!
|
| > The green branding is ok, but it's quite a strong
| personality for an app to have. Do you want the app to have a
| strong personality?
|
| I do like the design (though I'm sure it could be improved
| ofcourse).
|
| > - 427MB is huge
|
| Yes, unfortunately that comes with Electron.
|
| > Would be great to have a help reference in the app, or at
| least a docs page on the website that the help menu links to.
|
| Yeah, goo point, will fix!
|
| > Would be great to be able to change the font.
|
| Maybe :)
|
| > Where is the data saved?
|
| The whole buffer is stored in a file called buffer.txt
| located in the user data directory (varies depending on
| platform, on Mac it's ~/Library/Application Support/Heynote,
| on Linux ~/.config/Heynote). It's saved as soon as you edit
| with a small debounce.
|
| The data location is currently not configurable, and Heynote
| currently doesn't support reloading changes from the disk
| (except on startup), so at the moment it wouldn't work well
| to synchronize through a file syncing service if you were
| running Heynote on multiple machines. This is something I'd
| like to fix though.
| dameyawn wrote:
| Sync between devices (windows <> mac <> iphone) is the only
| thing more I'd want out of this. Great work!
| layer8 wrote:
| Is it possible to use proportional (non-monospace) fonts? It's
| not clear from the website. That would be a necessary feature
| for me.
| jonatanheyman wrote:
| It's not possible at the moment.
| bennetth wrote:
| This is great! One small suggestion: I'd love a shortcut to be
| able to insert the current date/time. Or perhaps track the time
| a block was created, and have an option to display that
| somewhere small on the UI for each block? I find it super
| helpful to have the date when search back through old notes
| like this.
| jonatanheyman wrote:
| Yes, I think adding the creation time and last update time of
| blocks is a good idea.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| Any chance of an arm64 build for Linux? I'm sure I could build
| it myself but it'd be nice if I didn't have to!
| jonatanheyman wrote:
| I configured the Linux builds yesterday, and I don't
| personally run Linux on any desktop machine, but I'll look
| into it!
| enginaar wrote:
| hey! i really like this. it's a great idea and implemented
| neatly. my MacOS arm install is <100mb. i know some asked for
| tabs. i would like to be able to open multiple windows.
| maineldc wrote:
| I just downloaded and installed and I am really impressed. I
| liked the concept of math blocks though it took me a few seconds
| to figure out how to change a new block into a math block. This
| note at the top wasn't clear to me:
|
| [?] + L Change block language
|
| The phrase block language didn't trigger my "change the type of
| block" thinking. I might slightly rephrase like:
|
| [?] + L Change block language (Math, Markdown, etc.)
|
| Otherwise, I think this is a great "scratches an itch" type
| project. Congrats!
| jonatanheyman wrote:
| Good suggestion, I'll change that!
| silvestrov wrote:
| It would be nice with some documentation of what the Math
| mode supports, e.g. syntax, units, functions.
|
| It can be difficult to figure out why some lines are
| interpreted ok and while others fail.
|
| How to convert between fahrenheit and celsius?
| jonatanheyman wrote:
| Yes, I've learned that Heynote is lacking some
| documentation. Will improve that.
|
| Math.js (https://mathjs.org/) powers the Math blocks, so
| what's supported by Math.js should be supported by Heynote,
| with the addition of currency conversions (exchange rates
| are updated daily).
|
| > How to convert between fahrenheit and celsius?
|
| This should work: 10 celsius to fahrenheit
| silvestrov wrote:
| Could it be made to parse "10degC" as "10 celsius" as
| that is much shorter?
|
| Suggestion: mouse over on green calculated value should
| show value in multiple formats. E.g. "time = 4000
| seconds" could show "01:06:40"
|
| also: "today + 4 days" or "now + 1 day"
|
| Unicode "p" should parse like "PI".
| samstave wrote:
| All blocks should be collapsable - I was playing with it and
| had to enter a comment marker in some to be able to get the
| collapse arrow in the bar, like # in a python block, however
| the behavior for a python block collapsing vs another - is
| that the python block collapses to ' ... ' Whereas, other
| blocks maintain the firt row as a header, so if I label
| another block NOTES and collapse it, I can still see the
| header.
|
| So a collapse button on every block would be nice.
|
| I love this. Thank you.
| jonatanheyman wrote:
| I agree! This would (will hopefully) be an improvement.
| samstave wrote:
| Maybe a block header which includes the timestamp for
| block birth and whatever text on that line for the title.
| So row 0 of every block would be the block meta header?
| no feature creep I promise...
|
| Oh! and one more thing....
|
| https://i.imgur.com/UZwOhIZ.png
| zestyping wrote:
| "Change block type" makes more sense then "Change block
| language". "Language" sounds like it could mean English,
| French, etc. whereas "block type" is unambiguous.
| AstroJetson wrote:
| I was bummed since it uses the entry point DiscardVirtualMemory
| and for some reason it won't work on Windows 7 (Yea, I'm still
| using W7 for "Work Reasons")
| skottenborg wrote:
| Out of curiosity, what use case can possibly warrant using
| Windows 7 in 2023?
| AstroJetson wrote:
| Very old PLC controllers in a mfg plant. You would be wildly
| (de)(im)pressed with the amount of equipment that is tied to
| W7 because of dongles, etc.
| bovermyer wrote:
| The usual reason is business-critical software that only runs
| on Windows 7.
|
| Source: I've worked for multiple companies with very niche
| software that only works on certain OSes.
| toppy wrote:
| Absolutely love it! I've been looking for such a tool for a long
| time. Just a looooong text file when I can write my snippets. I
| like UI, icon and even the name :) One suggestion - make it
| collapsable.
| jonatanheyman wrote:
| Thanks :)!
|
| Do you mean that the blocks should be collapsable? If so,
| blocks should be collapsable by clicking the small arrow to the
| right of the first line number. For some reason it seems that
| Markdown blocks aren't collapsable though - I'm going to
| investigate why.
| rswail wrote:
| Cool, been looking for new tools to help collect the mess that is
| my notes.
|
| Nice and simple, as a tool like this should be.
|
| A few questions after playing for a few minutes:
|
| * Where are the notes stored?
|
| * Can I delete a block easily?
|
| * After creating an additional cursor (great extra feature btw)
| how do I stop creating them, and/or remove one I've created?
| rswail wrote:
| Answered my own question on the additional cursor, Esc takes
| you back to a single cursor.
|
| Great way to make a list. Start with a number, make your list,
| then use the additional cursor to add in a checkbox.
| jonatanheyman wrote:
| > Where are the notes stored?
|
| The whole buffer is stored in a file called buffer.txt located
| in the user data directory (varies depending on platform, on
| Mac it's ~/Library/Application Support/Heynote, on Linux
| ~/.config/Heynote).
|
| > Can I delete a block easily?
|
| I do that by pressing: C-A Backspace Backspace.
|
| > After creating an additional cursor (great extra feature btw)
| how do I stop creating them, and/or remove one I've created?
|
| Pressing ESC (or C-G in Emacs mode) should remove all extra
| cursors.
| cyberge99 wrote:
| So I can use grep and pbcopy to interact with this on the
| CLI. Too cool! Thank you for a great app.
| jonatanheyman wrote:
| The buffer file has a syntax for the block separators, but
| it's human readable. Here's what it looks like:
| [?][?][?]text content of note 1 [?][?][?]text-a
| note 2 -a denotes that the block language is in
| autodetect mode and might change [?][?][?]css
| .some-class {
|
| etc...
| duiker101 wrote:
| Downloading now! I'm already excited! There's a couple of similar
| apps but they are 99% mac-only. Thanks for making a cross-
| platform one!
| james-bcn wrote:
| I really like the simplicity of it. I'm just not sure if I'd use
| it.
| jmuguy wrote:
| Haven't gotten a chance to try yet but thank you for having an
| icon that actually looks unique. My dock is filled with purplish
| blue circles and squares and I have no idea which app any of them
| are for anymore.
| perryraskin wrote:
| Kinda crazy that it took this long to get a Note++ equivalent (or
| similar) for macOS! Until now I've been using Sublime for all my
| quick dev-related scratch notes. This should make things way way
| better!!
| hoistbypetard wrote:
| Do you mean Notepad++? If so, that strikes me funny, because
| I've long thought of Notepad++ as a Windows thing that's kind
| of similar to BBEdit[1], which is a 25 year-old Mac editor.
|
| If not, what are you thinking of?
|
| [1](https://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/index.html)
| perryraskin wrote:
| D'oh, yes, I do mean Notepad++. I haven't used Windows in a
| while
|
| But good point, I totally forgot about BBEdit
| apwell23 wrote:
| This is great. I always resort to textedit for this stuff, i am
| going to use heynote instead and see how it goes.
|
| love seeing stuff like this on HN like the good old days.
|
| Any plans to add vi keybindings support by any chance?
| cvhashim04 wrote:
| This is cool. I was recently looking for something to use for
| quick notes. This should serve my use case
| zubairq wrote:
| Will definitely try this+-
| endigma wrote:
| AppImage DL leads to the windows .exe
| jonatanheyman wrote:
| Oh, good catch! Fixed now!
| space_ghost wrote:
| Nitpicks:
|
| * On Linux, clicking the main "Download / Linux AppImage" button
| results in Windows .exe download instead of an .appimage.
| Clicking on the down arrow and selecting Linux does work,
| however.
|
| * The opening sentence of the description includes "it's" instead
| of the more correct "its".
| jonatanheyman wrote:
| The link has been fixed. Thanks!
|
| And thanks for the grammar correction - I always keep doing
| that error (it's instead of its).
| chernoby wrote:
| It would be perfect that you add this on brew because most
| corporate mac users have no permission to download these type dmg
| except brew
| jonatanheyman wrote:
| Interesting! Do you know of any other Electron apps that can be
| installed via Brew?
| cyberge99 wrote:
| I think he's referring to a managed/corporate provided Mac
| machine.
| chernoby wrote:
| yes absolutely talking about that.
| Otek wrote:
| There are lots of them. You should checkout "brew cask"
| chernoby wrote:
| Postman, mattermost, 1Password most of it can be installed by
| brew and they using electron
| azinman2 wrote:
| I've never not had permissions to download a dmg; I wouldn't
| say most Mac developers...
| dmd wrote:
| "most"? I'd say that's actually an extremely weird and rare
| restriction.
| Renevith wrote:
| Not sure about "most," but I have this exact restriction at
| work. I don't think it's extremely rare.
| canogat wrote:
| Yes. There are lots of us on enterprise controlled systems and
| can only install apps with homebrew.
| michaelrpeskin wrote:
| I love this! I typically use a separate text editor for things
| like this, but the block idea is great and works with how my
| brain likes to group things.
|
| I know this is expanding the scope and complexity and probably
| opposite to what you're trying to do, but one thing that would be
| cool is to have different tabs. In my current workflow, I have a
| notepad for "working memory" which Heynote will easily replace. I
| also have a separate one to track the things I worked on each
| day. I need to have a record of who I charged for what incase I
| get audited. I could totally see having a block for each day -
| and I wouldn't want that intermingled with the other data.
|
| Oh I would love it if you could render markdown as formatted html
| a la Typora
| jonatanheyman wrote:
| Yeah, at the moment I'm hesitant to add tab support (for the
| reasons that you stated), though I've definitely thought about
| it.
| jameshart wrote:
| Right - not sure tabs is the right metaphor. I definitely
| want the ability to keep some blocks around, put them aside,
| return to them later...
|
| Maybe a block 'tagging' mechanism? Let me 'stash' a block and
| label it with tags... then later on I can 'restore' stashed
| blocks by searching for tags. Or open a new window easily
| containing every block that shares a particular tag?
| Perz1val wrote:
| Probably better not to. From my experience tabs (in the long
| run) are more annoying than helpful. Take vscode: I use the
| "open editors" menu, because tabs work just up to 3 of them.
| Then they either not fit (scroll-x), have titles far too
| short to be identifiable or take half the screen when using
| tab wrapping.
|
| I haven't used heynote yet (in a train rn), so you may've
| that already in place, but:
|
| I suggest implementing bookmarks with fuzzy search. Press
| ctrl+b a prompt comes up, type the thing, press enter and get
| your file scrolled to that section (markdown title)
| digdugdirk wrote:
| Love this idea. Almost like a vscode "go to definition"
| functionality. Pair that with a "go back to previous
| location" feature and you can get a surprisingly nice and
| flexible workflow.
| Perz1val wrote:
| Maybe try Obsidian for the second use case?
| dustinsterk wrote:
| Great work, I like this a lot. Some feedback:
|
| - It would be great to have the options of having tabs so that I
| could group my notes into a Math specific tab, or raw notes,
| code, etc.
|
| - Another option to the above tabs would be to sort the blocks by
| type (grouping all the Math at the top for example).
|
| - Having the ability to then save each block into a separate
| file.
| Tarucho wrote:
| Great work! I've been looking for something like this for quite a
| time!
|
| C# syntax support would be welcomed.
| who-shot-jr wrote:
| great work!
| dinkleberg wrote:
| This is super cool, nice work! I've just used apple notes for
| this in the past when on my mac, but this is way nicer.
| reacharavindh wrote:
| I use Apple Notes for this. It doesn't do the calculations, or
| the syntax highlight. But, it mostly just revives whatever I
| paste into it, and allows me to copy it to wherever when needed.
| Including images(screenshots), text with links etc.
|
| The side benefit from using Apple Notes is that it is constantly
| and reliably syncing to my phone. So, I can always refer to stuff
| on the go.
| maroonblazer wrote:
| I've recently started migrating from using Sublime Text to
| Notes for these scenarios too. I downloaded Heynote and am
| struggling to understand how/where it's better than either of
| those apps. Clearly I'm missing something, based on the other
| comments here.
| injuly wrote:
| This is so neat. Good work! I've tried Obsidian, Notion, Typora,
| and a myriad of other local editors only to come back to vim
| every time.
|
| My ideal text editor is one that has syntax highlighting,
| scratchpad, markdown support, block based editing, ability to
| link between documents and vim keybindings. No cloud login, AI
| assistant, cross-device sync, or other bloat.
|
| I try to avoid using electron apps for lightweight tasks, but
| Heynote looks like its worth a try.
| rubymamis wrote:
| Hey there!
|
| Maybe you'll like my next note-taking app[1]. It has a block
| editor based on Qt C++ so it's very performant. It supports
| Markdown out of the box, will have advanced media support like
| Kanban, images, columns, etc.
|
| [1] https://www.get-plume.com/
| anhhuy952k10 wrote:
| Finally I can ditch Sublime text as a scratch pad. This is
| simpler to use. Good work!
| joshstrange wrote:
| This is great and I quite enjoy it. I would love the ability to
| create multiple cursors from a selection (within a block of
| course). Intelij (and others) have a hotkey like Ctrl+G to add
| another cursor at the next instance of a word and Ctrl+Cmd+G to
| select all instances of a word. That's something I do in IDEA's
| scratch pads constantly but I'd like an ever-running note of what
| I'm doing divided into blocks.
|
| Also it would be awesome to have some metadata on each block that
| is toggle-able (or just inserts as text) so I can have the
| current date/time added or shown.
| jonatanheyman wrote:
| > I would love the ability to create multiple cursors from a
| selection (within a block of course)
|
| Ctrl-D (CMD-D on Mac) does this (currently not limited to the
| current block though, but that is something I'd like to
| change).
|
| > Also it would be awesome to have some metadata on each block
| that is toggle-able (or just inserts as text) so I can have the
| current date/time added or shown.
|
| Yeah, I've been thinking of adding timestamp (of last edit) as
| metadata for each block
| otterpro wrote:
| I just tried it and it runs nicely. I'm sure you get this request
| all the time, but I'd love to have VIM key binding. I'm still
| using vim/neovim and I open a "temp.txt" for scratch.
| rabbits_2002 wrote:
| I always have a text editor open for notes and snippets like
| this. This sounds like a perfect replacement. Tabs would be a
| very nice addition.
| hruzgar wrote:
| great application and something i didnt ask for but needed
| somehow ;) Sometimes i have to quickly write something down for
| the reasons you stated. Then i have to open a text editor like
| Windows Editor or Notepad++. These are nice but they really don't
| have the feeling to write things down. You have somewhat of an
| anxiety that you'll lose that data if you forget to save it. Also
| there is no vim support and stuff like that. So i really liked
| the idea and would definitely use it if it gets vim support! Also
| one thing i realized is that the cursor starts at the bottom of
| 'the note' or whatever i should call it. It would be great too if
| i got the cursor position where i left it when i closed the app.
| Also on Windows there is a black bar on the top which should be
| removable i think looking at obsidian and other js apps. Whatever
| these are just some small things and im sure they'll get fixed
| soon. Thank you for the great application and i hope it
| succeeds!!
| theSuda wrote:
| What's Windows Editor? Do you mean the good old Notepad? :)
| hruzgar wrote:
| yeah yeah suure Notepad of course. If Windows is set to
| german its "Editor" and not Notepad for some weird reason.
| Thanks for reminding me of that <)
| cyberge99 wrote:
| A few suggestions: On Macos a menubar item would be nice to pop
| the app up. Also, expanding the Language set to include bash and
| a few other common languages would be ace. Finally, if you remove
| the canvas background or set it to the same as the app background
| color, it will eliminate the white flicker when you resize the
| app window. If I get time, I may take a look and put in a PR.
| jonatanheyman wrote:
| Yes, I'd like to add more languages. It's currently limited to
| what Lezer (https://lezer.codemirror.net/) supports . However I
| just found this repo (https://github.com/withfig/lezer-bash)
| which seems to be Lezer grammar for bash, so I can probably use
| that for bash syntax support.
|
| > Finally, if you remove the canvas background or set it to the
| same as the app background color
|
| Will look into that. Thanks!
|
| > On Macos a menubar item would be nice to pop the app up
|
| Hm, not sure what this means, sorry :)?
|
| EDIT: Now I googled "macos menubar" and see what you mean :).
| I'll look into it!
| f0rmatfunction wrote:
| Would love to see support for Swift as well!
| hoistbypetard wrote:
| Initial thoughts:
|
| 1. It looks beautiful and useful. Very nice work! 2. I love the
| math sections. 3. I was shocked how large the download was. 4.
| It's chewing enough memory between the GUI and the (3!) helper
| processes that I will probably continue to use BBEdit for this
| kind of thing.
|
| I think it will be useful to a lot of people... I like it and
| could see myself using it sometimes even if it feels too heavy to
| keep it running all the time.
| jonatanheyman wrote:
| Yeah, large file sizes and some RAM overhead is a drawback that
| comes with Electron apps.
|
| However, it would never have been possible for me to make
| Heynote for all of Mac, Windows and Linux, on my spare time and
| within a reasonable timeframe, without Electron.
|
| Also, the CPU usage overhead for Heynote is minimal. It's one
| of the apps I use the most, and it's never among the programs
| that have used the most CPU. Yes, 200+ MB of RAM seems quite
| excessive in theory, but in practice it's less than 1% of the
| total RAM memory of my laptop (24 GB).
| albybisy wrote:
| a web app (PWA) would be perfect :)
| jonatanheyman wrote:
| Yeah, I've entertained the thought of adding a web version
| of Heynote to heynote.com (using local storage for
| persistence).
| satvikpendem wrote:
| You might consider Flutter for desktop apps next time, as
| they are compiled to machine code and won't be nearly as
| heavy as Electron, plus you get automatic mobile and web
| support.
| rubymamis wrote:
| My experience with apps built with Flutter is bad.
| Appflowy, for example, has extremely poor performance. Both
| in terms of loading large files and RAM usage. See my
| performance comparison of block editors[1].
|
| I've built a block editor using Qt C++ and QML that is
| vastly more performant[2].
|
| [1] https://imgur.com/ZL5QCS0
|
| [2] https://www.get-plume.com/
| hoistbypetard wrote:
| This feels like one of those situations where a PWA with
| local storage might be a winning play. Since it doesn't
| actually need filesystem access or some of the other
| integrations electron provides. In my case, at least, I do
| pretty well always have at least one chromium-type browser
| running, so that would cross off the download objection
| (which was mild) and the RAM overhead (which was more
| serious, today at least).
| fastball wrote:
| Consider Tauri[1] as well. It uses the native WebViews on the
| various platforms instead of bundling Chromium.
|
| FWIW, we also have an Electron app, in part because the
| integration with native APIs (which we use) is fairly full-
| featured with Electron. But if I was greenfield starting an
| app today I'd probably try Tauri. For your app it looks like
| you're not trying to do too much outside the WebView so might
| be worth checking out.
|
| [1] https://tauri.app/
| smusamashah wrote:
| Could it have been a PWA? I have seen some progressive web
| apps give an option to install as an app when you open them
| in your browser. Have thought about making a PWA for my kid
| which I could then install on my phone.
| declaredapple wrote:
| > However, it would never have been possible for me to make
| Heynote for all of Mac, Windows and Linux, on my spare time
| and within a reasonable timeframe, without Electron.
|
| I'm confused - browsers already do this for you - From what I
| can tell you aren't using any specific APIs necessitating
| electron?
|
| You also could easily have a live demo since it's a client
| side app.
|
| > Yes, 200+ MB of RAM seems quite excessive in theory, but in
| practice it's less than 1% of the total RAM memory of my
| laptop (24 GB).
|
| You should consider that people would be adding this to their
| workflow. So it's not not 200MB/Total RAM but instead it's
| 200MB/Remaining memory
|
| Mine has 32GB Total total but less then 2GB free (and the
| only reason it's free is because it was swapped), which would
| make this ~10% of my free memory. This means when I run
| webpack or other things like that it swaps even worse.
| vogtb wrote:
| This is rock solid. I keep a plaintext file with all my daily
| notes in it, but still find myself formatting code before/after
| dropping it in. The formatting feature alone is a draw here. The
| math part is great as well - I use a REPL all the time just to do
| napkin math.
| jonatanheyman wrote:
| "napkin math" - I'll steal that for the website. Thanks :)!
| suryo wrote:
| this is great and neat
| nip wrote:
| This is excellent
|
| Please add a donation button to allow us to thank you for your
| work
| jonatanheyman wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| Please send that donation to some organization that help people
| in greater need than me, on my behalf instead :).
| hughw wrote:
| I'd love a macOS menubar icon for Heynote. I currently use
| Evernote's Quick Note feature from its menubar app.
| jonatanheyman wrote:
| I'll look into it!
|
| Not what you asked for, but slightly related: You can set a
| global hotkey that shows/hides Heynote.
| hughw wrote:
| Yes, that might be adequate, thank you. I can't quite put my
| finger on what I like about the menubar app, but I do click
| it 30 times a day. Maybe just habit now.
|
| The hotkey is very responsive. Nice!
| albybisy wrote:
| very good concept! i really would like to have this as a Web-app
| instead of downloading it...
| jonatanheyman wrote:
| I've entertained the thought of adding a web version of Heynote
| to heynote.com (using local storage for persistence).
| devracca wrote:
| This looks great. I currently use Sublime Text for this. Can
| easily see using this. Thank you for building it.
| rebeccaskinner wrote:
| This reminds me a lot of org-mode(https://orgmode.org/). Do you
| have plans to add other org-like features, like evaluating code
| blocks? I don't personally see myself moving away from org-mode,
| but it would be nice to have something to recommend to people who
| are reluctant to use emacs, even if it's only for a single
| application.
| jonatanheyman wrote:
| Oh, I haven't seen orgmode before, so I don't know what its
| features are. I'm not planning to add evaluation of code blocks
| (apart from Math blocks that is) due to the complexity it would
| add.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| This is so much like org mode (or rather, a small subset of
| org mode) its fascinating and cool to me you had never even
| heard of it! Great minds...
|
| Make sure to also look at org roam, it is more specifically
| why I won't personally have a need for Heynote any time soon,
| but it could maybe be inspiring for you going forward.
|
| https://www.orgroam.com/
| bradrn wrote:
| > Oh, I haven't seen orgmode before, so I don't know what its
| features are.
|
| Essentially, it's an environment for writing+outlining+task
| tracking+time management. It's incredibly useful -- you
| should definitely try it since you've used Emacs.
| erdaniels wrote:
| I'd love to share this between computers (cross-platform) like I
| do my notes via IMAP. Is there an underlying file I can sync
| with?
| Gracana wrote:
| This is pretty cool. I particularly like the Math block.
|
| One issue I noticed while doing a calculation: "belt_pitch = 5/8
| in" evaluates to "0.625 in^-1". To get the behavior I expected, I
| had to add parenthesis around the fraction. Maybe this could be
| fixed by adjusting precedence rules?
| jonatanheyman wrote:
| Interesting. It's Math.js that is powering the Math blocks.
| I'll have to investigate if it can be configured.
| jameshart wrote:
| Really nice execution of a simple but compelling idea. And the
| presentation on the site is solid too - I _get_ what this is
| immediately, and I could see how it would be useful to me. A
| replacement for that Sublime text window I keep around where I
| paste stuff to keep for later, or to examine some JSON I just
| grabbed from somewhere!
|
| I do find myself wanting more features, but of course the beauty
| of this is how simple it is, so you definitely need to strongly
| resist the urge to add and add as people suggest ways to
| 'improve' it. Apply the old 'every feature starts with -100
| points' mindset (attributable to Anders Hjelsberg, I think?).
|
| But that said, I'm going to give you some feature requests anyway
| :D
|
| The thing I feel like I most immediately want from a tool like
| this is something close to the common SQL notebook behavior where
| you can select a few lines of text and hit F5 to run just the
| selection. Obviously only makes sense in language blocks which
| have a script engine associated. But the ability to write a chunk
| of JS or Python or shell and instantly execute it might be
| powerful. Where does it run, what happens to the output, etc? All
| good questions. No idea.
|
| I'd love to see markdown blocks get formatted in place (still
| monospaced, just some bold and italic and stuff) - probably
| whenever the cursor is not focused in the block... though the
| potential shift in line wrap that would cause might be annoying.
| Maybe just have an edit/display toggle on markdown blocks to flip
| them into formatted mode. Additionally, making markdown-formatted
| tables elastically align in place while editing them would be a
| huge quality of life boost....
|
| ... Which (since formatting markdown tables correctly amounts to
| the same thing) makes me think this could be an opportunity to
| implement a classic 'elastic tabstops' plain text mode... the
| fact that the tab key _only_ increases line indent is... an
| interesting choice that reduces the need to indulge any tabs vs
| spaces discussions - though obviously it 's possible to _paste_
| in text that contains tabs even if you can 't type them. Coming
| up with something better to do with inline tabs than just 'snap
| to next multiple of tab width' is tricky, but I would suggest
| maybe enabling 'elastic tab' rules:
| https://nickgravgaard.com/elastic-tabstops/ - because this is a
| place that's meant to handle copy/pasted text and stuff natively
| typed in, NOT a place that is expected to open and correctly
| format files.
| jonatanheyman wrote:
| > I do find myself wanting more features, but of course the
| beauty of this is how simple it is, so you definitely need to
| strongly resist the urge to add and add as people suggest ways
| to 'improve' it.
|
| Definitely! I'm happy that you preface the feature requests
| with this comment :).
|
| I've thought about the possibility of some kind of evaluation
| of code blocks, but at the moment I'm not planning to add it.
| Mainly because of the questions you posed :).
|
| Heynote currently gets most of its Markdown features (basically
| everything except the checkboxes) "for free" from CodeMirror's
| Markdown mode (https://github.com/codemirror/lang-markdown).
|
| Regarding tab size, I realize that it's something that I'm
| going to have to add settings for. Up until now, me and a few
| friends have been the only users of Heynote, and it seems like
| none of us favors tabs before spaces (or at least no one has
| asked me to fix it).
| porridgeraisin wrote:
| Love this. This is exactly what I need. I have been using a
| WhatsApp group with just me, for this purpose, until now.
|
| Feature requests: - arch package
|
| - would really like the results of the math to be in buffer.txt
| and in Ctrl+a and copy.
|
| - changing font and color theme(I like the Nord one right now
| though!) Please keep it minimally colored as it is now so that
| changing color is just a simple matter of configuring a handful
| of colors as opposed to custom css. That would make it too
| complicated.
|
| - support for images and media in markdown blocks would be nice
| to whatever extent possible. I would love it if you could copy
| the way vscode markdown works. Ctrl+v an image in the editor and
| it inserts the markdown for it and saves the image to a file.
| Markdown preview would be nice but I understand if you think
| that's out of scope.
|
| - timestamp for blocks. especially would be nice if you could
| store createdAt updatedAt in the line with the infinity symbols
| in buffer.txt to make it easily extractable using grep and cut.
|
| - saw that you mentioned downthread that you're working on
| reloading the file so that we can back it up with git or
| whatever. Would love that!
|
| - is mobile possible? Through Cordova or something
|
| Thanks for making this!
| silvestrov wrote:
| Font and color could be implemented by letting us add some CSS
| to the html page (as it is made using Electron).
|
| This would enable using fancy CSS for some notes.
| porridgeraisin wrote:
| Adding to it:
|
| Saw you mentioned below that you were planning to add a pwa +
| local storage version. In that case you can disregard my mobile
| request, and replace it with a download button on mobile so we
| can sync it to our desktop through git or drive or something.
| jonatanheyman wrote:
| > would really like the results of the math to be in buffer.txt
| and in Ctrl+a and copy.
|
| Adding the results to lines that are copied from Math blocks
| should be doable, and I like that idea! I agree that it would
| also be nice with the results in buffer.txt, but because of
| implementation details it's harder to implement I think.
|
| > changing font and color theme
|
| At the moment, I'm leaning towards keeping the number of
| configurable settings down and not add have font color theme
| settings.
|
| > timestamp for blocks. especially would be nice if you could
| store createdAt updatedAt in the line with the infinity symbols
| in buffer.txt to make it easily extractable using grep and cut.
|
| yes, this is on the TODO
|
| > saw that you mentioned downthread that you're working on
| reloading the file so that we can back it up with git or
| whatever. Would love that!
|
| Yes, this too :)
|
| > is mobile possible? Through Cordova or something
|
| Probably not :/
| porridgeraisin wrote:
| > At the moment, I'm leaning towards keeping the number of
| configurable settings down and not add have font color theme
| settings.
|
| Alright, if you ever lean the other way a tad bit, please
| allow configuration of fonts, I can try to contribute that
| feature next week. I don't mind fixed colors nearly as much.
|
| >> is mobile possible? Through Cordova or something
|
| > Probably not :/
|
| Understandable. Check my comment (sibling to my parent
| comment) for a suggestion for the PWA you mentioned though!
| bachmeier wrote:
| Changing the font is accessibility, not customization. I
| downloaded the app, opened it up, and the font was too small
| for it to be practical for me to use. I know it doesn't take
| much to fix, because I did a Ctrl-Shift-I, changed the font
| from 12px to 18px, and problem solved. It's not something I'm
| going to do over and over.
| rkeene2 wrote:
| Yeah, it's not really usable without being able to
| configure a reasonable font.
| monkey_monkey wrote:
| cmd + (or whatever the equivalent is for your platform)
| seems to permanently increase the font size.
| bityard wrote:
| This looks fantastic. I will definitely give it a spin. I've been
| tracking what I call "computational scratchpad" apps for a while
| now but haven't found one that fits my environment/workflow yet.
| Maybe Heynote will. Here are some others that I've looked at:
|
| * https://soulver.app Granddad of them all, Mac-only,
| proprietary, expensive
|
| * https://numi.app Mac-only, proprietary, semi-expensive. Has a
| Github and claims to be MIT-licensed but I don't see how you
| could build a working application with what's in the repo.
|
| * https://calca.io Windows- and Mac-only, proprietary, not
| expensive, nice docs.
|
| * https://notepadcalculator.com Web-based, not open source,
| hosted but uses local storage. You can optionally create an
| account to sign in and have your notes saved in plaintext on his
| server.
|
| * https://github.com/bbodi/notecalc3 Web-based, open source,
| self-hostable. But it seems to save your document in the URL
| string itself, which means the URL gets updated with almost every
| keystroke. Worth it for quick calculations and very small notes,
| I guess.
|
| * https://numpad.io Web-based, hosted, not open source. Also
| stores entire doc in URL, but doesn't update the URL bar the
| whole time you're typing.
|
| * https://numbr.dev/ Web-based, hosted. Has a Github but is not
| open source and the repo does not have all the bits needed to
| self-host it. Stores entire doc in URL.
|
| * https://github.com/metakirby5/codi.vim Vim/NeoVim plugin that
| is less like a "smart notepad" and more like Jupyter but with
| results printed on the right side of the screen instead of in a
| cell below. Supports lots of programming languages.
| antiframe wrote:
| I would consider Emacs to be the granddad of "computational
| scratchpads". Being able to run a repl in a buffer, tangle code
| blocks in org-mode, create buffers against which to run code,
| etc. Plus the calculator is fire.
| gnyman wrote:
| Great list! It looks exhaustive, you've managed to include all
| I have tried and a few more.
|
| Myself I have ended up with mostly using Soulver and TextMate.
| TM is not really the same thing but it has nice built in text
| manipulation for more advanced things like "diff selection with
| clipboard", regex and "sorta and remove duplicates". The thing
| it lacks is on the scratchpad/autosaving... So I just abuse the
| window restoration feature and never close or save any
| documents but have 50 textmate windows :-)
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Congrats! I really like this. I use Boop on Mac now for my
| "scratchpad", but the separate blocks here is really ideal for me
| - the one thing that was a problem for me with Boop is that it
| was a single buffer and all the helpful commands (not solely
| stuff like formatting but helpful things like "decode JWT) ran
| against the whole buffer. Great work!
| qainsights wrote:
| Great utility. I rely on Sublime to quickly jot down my thoughts.
| I will use Heynote going forward. A few suggestions:
|
| 1. Can we create multiple tabs with split view? 2. Display stats
| like word, character count in the status bar. 3. Export options
| for the notes.
|
| Thanks
| kposehn wrote:
| ...I wish this was on iPad too! Very cool to see and I'll try it
| on Mac.
| QuinnyPig wrote:
| Seconded!
|
| Of course, then I'd want sync. This is pretty close to what I
| want Drafts.app to be.
| kposehn wrote:
| Good point about sync. Probably could use iCloud Drive or
| Google Drive for data.
| AbraKdabra wrote:
| I absolutely fucking love this concept, this is basically my
| Sublime Text but with steroids, everyone using Notion, Obsidian
| and such apps and here I am with a +10000 lines of plain text
| where I dump everything and I am more than happy, and this
| concept only makes it better, it's how I prefer to organize
| myself but now I can make blocks of it and format it, I love it,
| really.
|
| This blocks thing reminds me of Toad for SQL which I used
| extensively years ago, where you could execute queries based on
| the position of the cursor, great feature.
|
| Any plans to change font and such things? Any general roadmap?
| jonatanheyman wrote:
| I'm happy you like it :).
|
| There's a roadmap in my head and some tickets in my private
| Trello, but I should probably create Github issues for those.
|
| There are a couple of main things that I want to add (file
| syncing support, timestamp metadata to blocks) and some general
| improvements. However I want to keep its simplicity, and I
| currently see Heynote as kind of complete when it comes to new
| _concepts_. Currently, I don 't think I'm going to add tabs,
| and I'm not planning to make it into a "real" editor by adding
| the ability to open and save files.
| rfreedman wrote:
| Looks great - I've been using markdown files and a markdown
| editor for my dev notes.
|
| But I tend to create a file per week, with notes about what I
| have to do / have done, etc. by day within the weekly file.
|
| Having one big file for a project that lasts months (or years)
| would be unworkable.
|
| I'd like to see the ability to create and open whatever files I
| want, rather than just saving a single pre-determined file.
|
| Good job, though - thanks!
| perryh2 wrote:
| I'll try this out! I use a Slack DM with myself to persist
| scratch notes. The main benefit of this is that I'd easily be
| able to view notes on my phone and other computers.
| jsdalton wrote:
| This is just outstanding. It's so exactly what I wish for out of
| a scratch pad.
|
| My feature request to add to your pile (possibly a lonely one,
| since maybe it's just unique to how my brain works):
|
| I really want a scratch pad like this to have UX that supports
| "inverted" order. Meaning, new blocks get added to the top of the
| page instead of the bottom. The blocks naturally flow in
| descending order of creation rather than ascending. The scratch
| pad always opens at the top of the page. Over time, blocks thus
| end up "decaying" toward the bottom, with the most relevant at
| the top.
|
| It just fits better with how my brain works.
|
| I also +1 the sentiment given elsewhere in this thread to bias
| toward ignoring the vast majority of these feature requests and
| preserve the simplicitly of what you've built. That includes
| mine!
| vy007vikas wrote:
| +1. This would be great. I could then use this for daily
| logging as well.
| hjadal wrote:
| I agree that this addition would be very helpful as it is
| already how I take notes in a markdown document.
| jonatanheyman wrote:
| Happy you like it :).
|
| I get the idea of the "inverted order". I wonder if it would be
| enough to make it configurable so that C-Enter inserts a new
| block _before_ the current one + Heynote sets the cursor at the
| beginning of the buffer at startup (instead of last which is
| the current behavior)?
| jsdalton wrote:
| Yeah I was thinking similar. And/or a separate shortcut key
| that opens a new block at the very top of the page
| (regardless of where the current cursor is positioned).
| smusamashah wrote:
| Having an option to set either behaviour the default would be
| a better choice here.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| I made a notes app that's kind of like that. Notes get added to
| the top and when you edit a note it gets "bumped" to the top
| again: https://thinktype.app/
| SpaghettiCthulu wrote:
| TIL using the .app TLD makes your website categorically an
| app
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean. This is an app that stores
| everything client side. It works offline. It's no different
| from a native app.
| chatmasta wrote:
| I also like this. But I don't like the distraction of seeing
| all the blocks below my cursor move every time I make a new
| line.
|
| The perfect UX would be to add a new buffer at the top, but
| with enough padding to fill the window so that you can't see
| the movement of previous blocks while you're typing.
|
| (Maybe this is already kinda how it works - I haven't
| downloaded the app yet, but I'm excited to try it, because it
| looks great!)
| radley wrote:
| >I don't like the distraction of seeing all the blocks below
| my cursor move every time I make a new line.
|
| Uhm... They don't move. They stay the same distance, relative
| to your line. As you add more lines, they'll disappear below
| the fold.
| chatmasta wrote:
| In a regular doc, if you start typing at the beginning,
| then all the lines after it move down as you type. It's
| just the movement I find distracting, compared to appending
| to a doc with no space below where I'm inserting text. I'd
| rather feel like I'm typing into empty space rather than up
| against a wall.
| karmakaze wrote:
| Nice! Is the single buffer feature, non-negotiable?
|
| I've found myself using Sublime Text in a similar manner
| _(because it 's crash-proof without saving to a named file)_.
|
| I do use multiple buffers though _(often ending up with too many
| and culling them like I do browser tabs)_.
| jelder wrote:
| The Slack use case highlighted on the front page would be better
| if Slack markup was an available syntax. Slack is not really
| Markdown, so composing messages in Heynote won't have high
| fidelity.
|
| One thing that often trips me up is that links and code
| formatting cannot coexist: [`method_name`](http
| s://github.com/example/example/blob/main/src/foo.rs)
|
| Would be rendered by most Markdown engines as a link with fixed-
| width text. Do the same thing in Slack and text will be fixed-
| width, but won't be a link.
|
| There's a partial summary of the differences here:
| https://www.markdownguide.org/tools/slack/
| divbzero wrote:
| I agree with the use case, but also wonder if it's more on
| Slack, Jira, _etc._ , to try harder to adopt Markdown.
| koiueo wrote:
| This looks great. And after reading the description I immediately
| thought of emacs. Only then I read this post.
|
| Have you tried emacs org-mode with code blocks? One can even
| execute them. (I never tried myself)
|
| Have you considered any other emacs-based options?
| sneak wrote:
| Note that this is not open source software. It has a nonfree
| license.
| divbzero wrote:
| "Math" mode apparently depends on Math.js: https://mathjs.org
|
| So it should support the syntax available in this Math Notepad:
| https://mathnotepad.com
| fastball wrote:
| Cool app! Reminds me of Quiver[1], which is the note-taking app I
| used throughout my college degree with varying amounts of
| success. It is also in part what inspired me to build my own
| note-taking app, as it opened me up to the idea that there are
| still a lot of unexplored modalities in the note-taking /
| knowledge-management space.
|
| [1] https://yliansoft.com/
| evnc wrote:
| I love this! Simple and solid execution. I've been wanting to
| build something similar for some time now, might fork and play
| around with it. Thank you for open sourcing it!
|
| I've started using Obsidian with a new note for each day and
| separating "blocks" with a Markdown horizontal rule (`---`) to
| achieve something similar, but this is much cleaner.
|
| The strength of such an approach is making capture extremely easy
| -- new block, start writing, no thinking about where this goes
| and how to fit it into pre-existing structure. I find that if I'm
| trying to do that, then by the time I find where my idea goes,
| I've lost the idea.
|
| The downside, of course, is _finding_ things again. The ability
| to tag or title a block and search by tag or title would be
| great. More ambitiously, it would be cool to experiment with
| incorporating LLMs and embeddings to automatically tag,
| summarize, categorize, cluster etc. your blocks.
|
| There's a lot of different directions one could take this, but
| I'll echo the sentiment of others to refrain from adding too many
| features and losing the original appeal of simplicity. :)
|
| Also: How do you handle performance when the buffer gets very
| large?
| jonatanheyman wrote:
| Performance is mostly handled by CodeMirror
| (https://codemirror.net/), the underlying editor that Heynote
| is built upon. It seems to handle quite large buffers well.
| Where I have seen some minor performance issues is when working
| with very large _blocks_ in certain language modes.
| mkl wrote:
| It's not open source, as it uses the Commons Clause which
| severely limits what can be done with it (the name is
| misleading).
| prartichoke wrote:
| As far as a quick google search got me, it seems pretty open
| with the only caveat being you can't sell or monetize it...
| how is that not open source?
| shafyy wrote:
| Amazing, and congrats on building it! Any plans on supporting
| Ruby syntax?
| dceddia wrote:
| This looks awesome! I love the blocks idea. I'm gonna download
| and give it a try.
|
| I see lots of comments about Electron (per usual here haha) and I
| just thought I'd shout out Tauri if you hadn't run across it.
| It's basically Electron-but-in-Rust and uses the system webview
| instead of Chromium, so bundle size and memory usage is reduced a
| bunch.
|
| I took a look at the code and it looks like you haven't got a ton
| of Electron-side code so _if_ you felt like playing with Rust it
| might not be too hard to swap. I have a video editing app that I
| started building with Electron and then switched to Tauri midway
| and it's been pretty nice.
|
| I hope it's clear this isn't a request and please feel free to
| disregard this comment entirely :)
| jonatanheyman wrote:
| Yeah, I looked at Tauri in the beginning of the project. What
| made me go with Electron was the maturity and large user base.
| And it has actually been a bliss to work with Electron (my
| expectations after having worked with other cross-platform
| tools for mobile were extremely low), so I haven't regretted my
| choice. I've dealt with very few bugs. I love that there is a
| large ecosystem, and that it was easy to automate building (as
| well as auto-updating) for multiple platforms.
| dceddia wrote:
| That makes a lot of sense. I miss a bit of that from
| Electron. Its auto-updater is nicer, and while I haven't had
| a ton of cross-browser issues there've been a couple that I
| had to fix with transpiling or avoiding some newer CSS stuff.
| Shipping everything with one browser engine lends a lot
| toward peace of mind.
|
| I wish there was a way to build a stripped-down Electron,
| like a configurator where you could uncheck things you don't
| need. Printing support? WebGPU? WebRTC? Video playback? PDF
| reader? Straight to jail. It would be lovely. I'd love to see
| what would happen to the bundle size.
| esafak wrote:
| I read that the Rust part was unergonomic. Do you find Tauri
| productive?
| dceddia wrote:
| Yeah, it works pretty well for me. Rust definitely took some
| getting used to (I was new to it when I started).
|
| There's a lot of functionality you can access from JS without
| needing to get into Rust, but on the Rust side Tauri has this
| notion of "commands" for calling Rust from the UI.
|
| You can write a Rust function and annotate it with
| #[tauri::command], and register it, and then you can call it
| from the JS side with invoke('your_command_name', args).
| Those commands can be async too, so you can do blocking work
| on the Rust side and the UI won't freeze.
|
| You can inject State variables into those commands, which get
| injected at call time and are effectively global to the Rust
| side. I would say the State stuff is a bit unergonomic in
| that you run up against needing to share them between
| threads, so everything inside them needs to be Arc<Mutex<>>
| and writing those wrappers was boilerplatey.
|
| I wish the JS <-> Rust calling overhead were lower. It
| serializes everything to JSON and back, so I try to avoid too
| many calls, and try to avoid sending lots of data between
| them.
| 05bmckay wrote:
| Hahaha, had this same idea a little while back, really cool
| stuff: https://lol-dusky.vercel.app/
| Rudism wrote:
| I love the idea of this after playing with it for a few minutes.
| My main gripe is that the font size is way too small for my old-
| man eyes, and it doesn't seem to remember or restore the previous
| zoom-level when launching (meaning I need to re-zoom-in every
| time). If it were possible to set a larger font-size or if the
| previous zoom level was saved and restored on each launch that
| would be a greatly welcome addition to what seems like a super
| useful tool.
| jonatanheyman wrote:
| Restoring the zoom level on restart is a good idea. Thanks for
| the suggestion!
| nateb2022 wrote:
| You can zoom in with [Ctrl][Shift][+], and zoom out by
| [Ctrl][-].
| rkeene2 wrote:
| It's not just the font size but also the choice of font, with
| no way to specify a font that is readable.
| WillAdams wrote:
| I _really_ like it --- have you thought about a more abstract
| icon? Agree w/ folks elsethread that just removing the text would
| be a huge improvement --- perhaps have an option for displaying
| total number of blocks and collapsed blocks?
|
| Where are the currency conversion ratios pulled from? I guess
| that requires 'net access?
|
| Possible to add a right-click menu (say to collapse blocks and so
| forth)?
|
| There seems to only be one fold point for a given block? (The
| markdown one for instance) --- it would be nice if the first and
| second line were always possible collapse/folding points.
|
| Perhaps menu commands for collapse all/show all?
| apsurd wrote:
| The webpage is great. loads INSTANTLY. So noticeably fast that I
| checked the source. Looks more or less hand-done.
|
| Just want to give a nod and say thanks for the craft and care.
|
| & +1 I downloaded the scratchpad. Looks useful.
| totalhack wrote:
| I use org mode which was great in emacs but the plugin kinda
| sucks for VS code. The main feature there is the ability to fold
| and nest sections.
|
| I see you have a "blocks" concept which seems roughly equivalent
| to a top level foldable bullet in org mode. Are blocks nestable?
| Otherwise what is the recommended way to organize a multi-block
| set of notes? Typical example for me might be tackling a larger
| problem/feature (top level block) and then having sub
| blocks/bullets for each part of the problem which are also
| foldable. I usually don't go more than a few levels deep but
| could get by with just 2 if need be.
| xenodium wrote:
| Hey congrats, this looks great for macOS! Trying it now!
|
| With a similar mindset and an Emacs background, I wanted a
| _scratch_ -like experience on iOS, so I built one
| https://xenodium.com/scratch-a-minimal-scratch-area. Seems to
| work for others too https://irreal.org/blog/?p=11202
|
| While there's a new built-in iOS journaling app, I'm building one
| to save to plain text (and no lock-in). https://xenodium.com/an-
| ios-journaling-app-powered-by-org-pl...
| bbx wrote:
| Very interesting! A few years ago I imagined something similar,
| with the added ability to move blocks between adjacent windows:
| https://twitter.com/jgthms/status/1225513837379641350
| promiseofbeans wrote:
| I saw the unit conversions and it immediately reminded me of Fend
| (https://github.com/printfn/fend). If you're looking to expand on
| your maths / unit conversion feature, it could be a good option.
| It also supports forum-style since rolling (e.g. 3d6+4), which
| some people could find pretty useful
| prakashn27 wrote:
| Looks cool. Vim would be a great addition.
| gnatolf wrote:
| I've always used multiple tabbed unsaved files in notepad++ to do
| the same. Funny how things converge, this is very similar.
| prakashn27 wrote:
| looks cool.
|
| Vim would be a great addition.
| rg2004 wrote:
| The idea of Pages/Tabs would be useful to me. I'm a bit of a
| scratch-pad hoarder. I currently have 200+ notepad++ documents
| open.
| AlphaWeaver wrote:
| The calculations alongside the notes remind me of the "dynamic
| annotations" in Ink and Switch's "Potluck" [0] demo. I wish there
| were more examples of this in note taking applications - this
| sort of progressive enhancement from unstructured notes to
| structured data is useful.
|
| [0]: https://www.inkandswitch.com/potluck/
| smithza wrote:
| emacs org mode... anything else needed?
| swah wrote:
| Nice but..I expected a run command on my Javascript block.
| computershit wrote:
| Seriously, nice work. If you are going to eventually offer a web
| version of it it would be great to be able to self-host.
| delijati wrote:
| I currently have a insane long Markdown file as brain dump. Will
| give it a shot. Something like an overview or minimap or a way to
| structure like mindmap would be nice :)
| promiseofbeans wrote:
| Once browser support improves, minimaps on web-powered stuff
| will be pretty trivial: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
| US/docs/Web/CSS/element
| mike31fr wrote:
| Units handling in maths blocks is awesome.
|
| Exemple 1:
|
| g = 9.81 m/s^2
|
| time = 60s
|
| Then "g*time" shows "588.6 m / s"
|
| Exemple 2:
|
| energy = 14 J
|
| distance = 5m
|
| "energy/distance" shows "2.8 N"
|
| Wow.
|
| EDIT: I just found out that behind the scenes it's using
| maths.js. This library does this natively. Input "14J/5m" into
| maths.js and you get "2.8 N" as output. Glad I discovered this
| library.
| arjonagelhout wrote:
| I've been using iA Writer for this exact purpose. A place to
| quickly dump text I don't want to lose or quickly create drafts I
| don't want to accidentally send.
|
| I'm not sure whether blocks would be better than just separate
| files, which can be created quickly using Cmd+N.
|
| However, the lack of syntax highlighting in iA writer has been
| less than ideal, so I'm definitely trying this out!
| arjonagelhout wrote:
| First impressions:
|
| - resizing the window creates white borders when the content of
| the window hasn't been updated yet to reflect the new window
| size. these are a bit jarring / look non-native.
|
| - I try to keep electron apps to a minimum, as I've had only
| bad experiences with them so far (Discord, Warp, Unity Hub) and
| they take up a lot of resources.
|
| - While writing code, it does not keep indentation when
| entering a closing bracket.
|
| These are more nitpicks, but I love the concept :) Great work!
| threaz wrote:
| Great app. Thanks for making it available.
|
| Is there an option to rearrange blocks using drag-and-drop or a
| keyboard shortcut?
| swyx wrote:
| ah a fellow electron app publisher! qq - have you figured out
| automatic updates yet? i tried to do that in my app
| (https://github.com/smol-ai/GodMode) but everyone just complains
| about a blank white screen whenever i push an update, if they
| even receive it at all. feels very flimsy. what do uou recommend
| for update push best practice?
| Kreliho wrote:
| This looks super nice! I have been using either a plain text
| file, or telegram's saved messages, or the clipboard history for
| basically the same purpose, and it never really occured to me
| that there would be such an elegant solution. Looking forward to
| trying this out when I get back tonight.
| mkl wrote:
| It seems strange for the website to only give the Apple shortcut
| keys for a cross-platform app. It gives the actual keys when I
| run it on Linux, but I can't figure out what "Ctrl + [?] +
| Up/Down" means.
|
| Looks quite neat though.
| johntash wrote:
| "[?]" is "option" on a mac keyboard, which should usually be
| the alt key on linux/windows
| mkl wrote:
| Not alt here apparently, or super.
| plonkus wrote:
| This is great! Thank you for creating this. Would love to see
| unix timestamp conversion in there too
| csmeyer wrote:
| I thought this looked pretty cool, and downloaded. Messed around
| with the demo for a second and hit CMD+s to save my thing
| somewhere and realized this was actually literally just a simple
| scratchpad. This will be my daily driver!
| poetril wrote:
| This is awesome! I currently use numpad[0] for this, but would
| much prefer a local app. I would love to switch but the only
| thing holding me back is lack of Vim support. Are there any plans
| to add Vim keymap in the future?
|
| 0: https://numpad.io/
| jonatanheyman wrote:
| See https://github.com/heyman/heynote/issues/24
| zdrummond wrote:
| Looks great. Quick question. When I started it up, Little Snitch
| immediately told me it made a connection to GitHub and
| currencies.heynote.com.
|
| Why does a scratch pad need to phone home?
| giankam wrote:
| Probably Github for autoupdate and currencies for current
| currency rates
| jonatanheyman wrote:
| Correct.
|
| For the paranoid it should be simple to fork Heynote and
| disable currencies and auto updates.
| nightwolf wrote:
| This is fantastic, thank you for making and sharing it?
|
| Is there any chance of Heynote supporting Clojure syntax one day?
| johntash wrote:
| I was expecting to not like this, but it's actually pretty cool.
| I love how simple it is and that it's not trying to replace
| everything.
|
| I used to use the scratch buffer in Emacs all the time, and it is
| something I missed from emacs. I go between using Obsidian and
| Trillium for notes, but I'm going to try using Heynote for a
| scratchpad / quick notes type of thing and copy things from it if
| it's worth saving.
|
| Maybe a feature request would be the ability to export a block? I
| wouldn't want it to be complicated so maybe just something like
| "Export block to command" and then the command could be a
| customizable curl command or some other command that copies stdin
| to another app.
| sigmonsays wrote:
| emacs org mode + babel =P
| plutokras wrote:
| Great tool, thanks for sharing. If you are open to suggestions, I
| would love to have spellcheck in it.
|
| https://github.com/languagetool-org/languagetool
| smcleod wrote:
| I like the execution and minimalist UI.
|
| It would be awesome if this was a native or Tauri / Wails app,
| moving away from Electron would really de-bloat the application
| and set it apart from say using another VScode extension etc... I
| already have far too many chrome instances running due to
| Electron.
| lelanthran wrote:
| I like this so much!
|
| (Now I want to add blocks in reverse chronological order to my
| todo app)
| tefloon69 wrote:
| This is amazing! One thing I'd love to see though is the ability
| to zoom in/out like in Sublime
| jameshart wrote:
| On Mac, at least, [?] + and [?] - seem to change the font size.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| Really cool idea. I ran it on Windows and noticed the text
| rendering was off (incorrect/missing subpixel anti-aliasing) but
| at the same time I got distinct Electron vibes which threw me
| off: Electron does text rendering correctly and lack of subpixel
| rendering usually means a custom (native) gui. Is everything a
| canvas? If so, using text gives you accessibility plus better
| text rendering.
|
| But maybe it's just the font. Is there a way to change which font
| is used?
| nathanh4903 wrote:
| i immediately tried e^(pi i) and is delightfully surprised that
| it works! not only the math supports complex numbers, it also
| allows functions
|
| however, something like f(x)= sin(x)/x, f(0) returns NaN.
|
| Are there any plans to support derivatives, integration and
| summation?
| rglover wrote:
| This is really, really good. Just earned a permanent spot on my
| dock in short order.
|
| One request (which I would happily pay for): make it so that you
| can run the code blocks and generate an output. I routinely crack
| open the browser console to test out some JS and it would be
| great to be able to do this right alongside my other notes.
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(page generated 2023-12-22 23:00 UTC)