This post is part of my wider enquiry into my note-making practices.
Requirements
The key technical requirements for my new note-taking setup are as follows:
- must be based on Markdown text files
- optionally the ability to enhance publishing with mdx
- able to separate publishable files from private
- must support any backup or versioning that will work for text files (e.g. dropbox, GitHub)
- not locked into someone else’s product
- publishing selected notes to static website
- options with scriptability and/or templating to reduce the amount of time taken on basic process tasks
Current tools
I started this note last November, and the title implied that I’d settled on a new note-making tools setup. The reality is that a setup is never fixed, and I find an ever-present temptation for yak-shaving.
The core elements I’m using right now are:
- two git repositories, one private for daily working notes, a second one that is published to my digital garden
- for desktop editing the private, quotidian working notes I have experimented with Obsidian and find it productive. However cost of the notes ecosystem is important, and an Obsidian licence for commercial work is an annual subscription, so I have reverted to using Foam, as below
- desktop editing of the public digital garden is currently edited using the Foam plugin on top of Visual Studio Code
- publishing is a custom Gatsby.js site hosted on Netlify
- Mobile git client is Working Copy
- for mobile quick capture of thoughts I use Drafts (Pro) - including its great dictation feature on Apple Watch
- for detailed editing on mobile I am currently using IA Writer
