Show HN: Edna, note taking app for developers

desktop, or offline? isn't the PWA satisfactory?

Desktop would be easy to do but seems a bit pointless.

You can install a PWA shortcut which gives you even more desktop experience in the sense that it looks like an app separate from the browser.

That is what I do.

What are those corporate rules and how are they enforced?

Is it about storing data? Because Edna stores the notes on your computer, it's never sent to any server.

If you have git, golang and bun/nodejs on your machine it works from localhost.

  git clone git@github.com:kjk/edna.git
  cd edna/server && go get && go build && cd ..
  ./server/server -build-local-prod
  ./server/server -run-local-prod

I created https://floatynotes.app a while ago, which might fit your list :). It provides virtual sticky notes, using the new Document Picture-in-Picture API.

quick capture experience

How would that experience look like? (I think I'm after the same thing!)

To me this looks more like Unforget which was shared here a few weeks ago https://unforget.computing-den.com/demo

Silverbullet.md looks really good to me. With a few more features it might be able to replace vscode as my note taking app.

Command + P worked for me in Firefox, but Command + Shift + P did not.

Further, because I don't type in QWERTY, I noticed that _some_ shortcuts seem correctly mapped in my layout, but others are not. The Option+N shortcut for a new note just starts the "˜" combining character (expecting a following character like "n" to form "ñ") when using the "n" key in my layout. However it works if I use the physical "n" key (which is my "k").

I feel like that explanation is pretty poor, but yeah basically some shortcuts seem bound to the physical key location whereas others seem bound to the mapped key. I wonder if they are declared differently?

Undocumented: Ctrl + K and Ctrl + O also work.

Ctrl + K was actually the first. Ctrl + O because it's naturally "open". And you can switch to command palette with `>`, like in vs code.

I've added Ctrl + P and made it the documented one because I also use VS Code heavily and I was tired of context switching.

It's unfortunate that it conflicts with browser's Print but I figured that you do this often and print rarely.

The ultimate solution, of course, is to allow customizing keybindings.

Yeah, the reason I could add Go quickly is because I already did the hard work of figuring out how to execute Go code when I built https://tools.arslexis.io/goplayground/

Executing JavaScript safely is actually hard. You don't want to just execute code in browser context because then an attacker could trick you to execute his JavaScript code and e.g. grab all your notes.

So you need to sandbox it via e.g. iframe or by running using wasm-compiled quickjs

Which is something I might do.

Additionally I'm thinking about allowing to run a javascript function over content of a block so e.g. you could base64-encode a text block etc.

Me too - I currently use https://runjs.app/ while developing but this would fit better.

That is probably the most useful shortcut that I haven't been using. I have been up the creek since my workplace implemented and actually-effective browser extension plugin and I lost my precious Vim Vixen.

Regarding accessing from any device: at least for desktop you can store notes on disk, in a folder managed by DropBox or OneDrive or Google Drive (https://edna.arslexis.io/help-win#storing-notes-on-disk).

You can then access the note on every computer where you replicate that folder.

This doesn't cover accessing from mobile or computers you don't own but it's just a different kind of a problem of auth.

Edna is actually a self-contained go binary that you could run yourself on a server or your desktop.

Currently the backend (Go server) is there to just serve HTTP files but it wouldn't be hard to add storage API to Go server and modify Edna to use that. I already have 2 storage backends: local storage and file system api.

I would say it would be at most a few days of work to make it work similarly to SB but that's not something I plan right now. I still have some UI functionality to add to Edna and then we'll see.

Funny you would say that.

Earlier I also made a fork of silverbullet: https://notedapp.dev/ with similar goals to Edna (which is a fork of heynote).

But don't use it. I stopped working on it half-way. In retrospect, I've made a mistake there of doing my note storage backend.

Then I was thinking about re-starting it and re-doing the backend for notedapp but then I saw heynote and used that as a based and I'm quite happy with the result.

I do like SilverBullet so it's a possibility that I'll do another project which combines the UX ideas of Edna with SilverBullet editing UI. But for now I still have some ideas for Edna, will keep me busy for at least a week :)

I found your blog and your diary of a solo developer building a web app [0]. Maybe the answers to my questions are there. Thanks for this, too.

[0]: https://blog.kowalczyk.info/article/30da6655040f47e693f8e66e...

As far as individual commits, you can see the scope yourself: https://github.com/kjk/edna/commits/main/

Yes, I like to work in relatively small, but logical, commits.

Yes, I did have clear goals in mind. I knew I wanted multiple notes, storing notes on disk, command palette, encryption etc.

I was writing the app for myself and using it every day, which helps with motivation and knowing what to do next.

There were also changes based on usage. For example, I've added a top nav bar but occasionally it would obscure the text so I made it hidden when typing.

One of the uses of Edna is keeping track of what I want to do next.

I have a note for each project, including Edna, and I keep a list of ideas there, sorted by the most important things at the top.

That way I can jump start the day quickly by looking at that note and picking one of the items to implement.

It's based on Monaco Editor, which is the open source base of VSCode - you can see the full list of supported languages by clicking the dropdown on the bottom right (similar to VS code: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/languages/overview#_chang...)

The above is a partial list, Edna supports about 30 langs.

To add another one, you need to find library that implements CodeMirror mode for that language, add it to package.json and update languages.js

This is one of the uses for me as well: jotting temporary notes when programming.

One of the default notes is `scratch` for exactly that and you can summon it quickly with `Alt + 1`

I had the same experience as you, and held off on getting into note taking with Obsidian for quite a while. Eventually someone said to me "Don't worry about workflow at all, just start taking notes with no flow or organization. You will develop a flow that works for you as you use it more." That's what I did, and it was very true. I don't think my flow matches any popular workflow, I just started taking notes and it naturally developed.

If you have something you want to write down to be able to reference in the future, create a note and put that in it. The next time you want to write something down, you can either put it in the note you already created, or you can make another note if that sounds nicer. Up to you. You'll find out what works.

You can do basically what you're doing right now, which is opening a random file and putting it in there, except now instead of your files being spread across your system they're all in one place, and if you want to start doing fancier stuff with them in the future you can. I use a small percentage of Obsidian's features, and they don't get in my way if I'm not using them.

Yeah, so far this behavior is inherited from Heynote.

I've been thinking about making math an option within markdown.

The type of the block is shown at the bottom, in the status bar.

It's a possibility but I'm not using those myself so I don't have good intuition on what is a good UI for that.

A relatively simple thing would be to add "preview block" which e.g. for mermaid blocks would add a panel with rendered diagram.

A much more complicated solution would be to add codemirror view which renders diagram when cursor is outside the markup and switches to editing when inside markup.

But that's significantly more complicated.

Nope, OG NV had inter-note linking, Simplenote syncing, file saving, encrypting, etc. long before the NVAlt fork existed[1]. Just about the only thing NVAlt added was a Markdown preview pane.

1. https://notational.net

I guess I could add 2 helpful features:

    - autocomplete for note name when `[`
    - if there's note `foo` and `[foo]` in markdown block, Ctrl + click could open to that note

It is a fork of Heynote.

Edna actually has Emacs mode which you can choose in settings.

You can see implementation: https://github.com/kjk/edna/blob/main/src/editor/emacs.js

I can't say how well it works. I just noticed that I would need to change some keybindings because they conflict with Emacs keybindings.

org-mode has entered the chat.

Heynote is a scratchpad, a single note, and has no plans to support multiple notes or really grow it beyond what it is right now.

Which I respect but I needed at least multiple notes, bringing this much closer to apps like Obsidian, Bear etc.

And then I added a bunch of features that I wanted to have, like UI for opening/creating/deleting nots inspired by Notational Velocity, encryption, command palette, history, Ctrl + B for navigating between blocks.

Edna is basically a superset of Heynote: it does everything Heynote does and lots more.

So yeah, the vision is pretty different.

It has math blocks, which are powered by math.js

Agreed. Sumatra is great. The addition of night/dark mode was a game changer. It's lightweight and effective, and thus efficient. Accordingly, knowing that this project originates from someone involved with Sumatra speaks volumes.

Block type is also displayed at the bottom in the status bar. Click on that to change.

Or: context menu (right click), Block / Change Language.

Or: command palette, "Block: Change Language" command.