I didn’t mention Scrivener because I was focusing on note-taking, outlining, etc. I’ve been using Scrivener for most of my academic writing for the last few years – articles, book chapters, conference papers, that sort of thing. I use it primarily in the in-deep writing phase of a project, having previously compiled research in DT, outlined in OO, etc. Scrivener’s ability to shuffle around sections of a early draft so as to develop the right structure and sequence of an article – which in the humanities often only emerges as you write – is invaluable, and it’s a solid environment for actual writing/editing. (Though it still needs work on how it handles essential elements of scholarly writing, things like footnotes. What I really want is a tool that organizes text like Scrivener but has the word processing abilities of something like Mellel.). Up until this point, I’ve used Scrivener for short work, which in my field means anything from 3000 to 15,000 words or so. I’m about to embark on my first book-length project in Scrivener, say 80,000 words, so that will really put it to the test, I think.
I mentioned Scrivener partly because of the post by @kewms just above (if you frequent the Scrivener forums I think you will recognise the handle). I remember AmberV on those forums writing at length about using Scrivener as a notepad.
Anyway, having written a PhD thesis of over 80,000 words with Scrivener (v2) I would thoroughly recommend it for long-form work. And I never had any trouble with footnotes myself, though my requirements were not very exacting. I used it in tandem with Bookends for the bibliography.
Cheers.
Give iThoughts a try 
It’s incredible as MarkDown structuring engine!
FWIW, I find the advantages of having my notes in the same tool I use to write far outweigh any disadvantages of Scrivener relative to dedicated “notetaking” tools. This may be partly because I find the distinction between “writing” and “notetaking” somewhat artificial: my “notes,” sorted and arranged by theme, become the “outline” for my “first draft.”
YMMV, of course.
(And yes, as mbbntu notes, I’m on the Scrivener support team. But I was a happy user long before that.)
Would prefer to do all note noting on DT/DTTG but editor is not user friendly when compared to others. I’m using iA Writer for markdowns and Agenda for rich text (love this app, so user friendly to use. Images are smaller in size and don’t want to muck around with different fonts). Will then copy notes from Agenda to DT/DTTG for storage.
@tja could you elaborate on how you use this? am a passionate devonthink user and ithoughts is my mindmapping tool of choice, but it never occured to me to use it as an outliner in conjunction with my markdown files in DT. would be great if you could demonstrate your use here or in a seperate thread?!..any more detail would be appreciated…thanks!
I use Scrivener, but it is hard to take notes out of it without copy and paste. As notes should be atomic and self-contained, it is better to write them in DT3 and, if needed, to add them to a project in Scrivener. In addition, DT3 can link notes, has a much more powerful search and, of course, several other things that make note management an easy task.
I use Scapple, an app associated with Scrivener, for mind-mapping. It is simple, cheap, and powerful. It can also export the map as an outline. However, I have to admit that I prefer outlining rather than mind-mapping when organizing ideas for articles and books.
Why is DT3 not user-friendly to take notes? Can you elaborate a bit more? Where is the friction?
Would be a pleasure.
Problem is, I cannot find any example markdown text that I could use to showcase iThoughts.
Any idea?
It should of course be a larger text with lots of headings …
But only that, I am not sure how much of other MarkDown iThoughts understands:
For structuring and arranging text, we just need headings and their content.
Best to try the apps to get a feel.
I do a lot of note taking in meetings and phone calls. Markdown with iA writer which has lots of keyboard shortcuts & quick pop up keyboard, very easy alignment and looks clean. Richtext using Agenda which is beautiful app with simple yet powerful menu/shortcuts, keep fonts the same so I don’t have to muck around when doing quick copy & paste from web/other apps/etc, quick and easy to change style - for example, try to quickly change style or make a sentence bullet point on DT for heading vs how fast to do it on Agenda. Those are what I really like as editors.
Conversations and ideas fly around fast during meetings and over phone calls so need something that’s fast & easy to use and I can email my notes immediately, rather than having to spend time tidying up when on DT/DTTG. Try those apps and you know what I mean.
Plus I can edit RTFD files on Agenda mobile which DTTG can’t do
Thanks. I see. The friction is that you write and format the text simultaneously during meetings. One solution is to create a template (in markdown or RTF) in DT3 with your preferred format. Copying and pasting from an external source without changing font is possible using a command in the edit menu that has also a shortcut. I believe Jim has several other ideas to reduce your friction within the DT environment.
Template doesn’t work… Notes are random depending on topic and customers. Agenda and iA Writers are focused notes app thus they are (not-surprisingly) much better in that space. Give those apps a try if note taking is important to you. It is what it is so I don’t waste time complaining; DT has its strength and weaknesses. Hopefully 1 day soon the editor especially for rich text will improve.
Many many people start with the Drafts App, on both macOS and i*OS.
It is simply perfect for capturing text!
This cannot be reached in other Apps.
Point.
Sadly, Drafts has one problem:
It works on it’s own databases of texts.
It cannot store them as files in any volume, storage or file provider.
It is time to start a Drafts clone that runs on regular files
EDIT: The lecture is, that it is not possible to include any and all possible and useful feature - therefor, the most important point is inter-operability of apps!
It is MOST important to make any sort of exchange as easy as possible.
No other way.
For me note taking, first of all on mobile devices, means to be able to just tap and type right away. No picking of notebooks/folders, file type and whatnot, just go for it als long as the idea (which turns out to be utter crap latter in most cases, but that’s another story and no app is about to blame for that) is still fresh.
Plus it must have a customizable keyboard row for often used characters missing on the standard key pad or even for customized scripts.
Indeed Drafts was the first app I discovered that offers this. And indeed it’s locked nature drove me away. While I like that I can set up actions for very specific needs I have a general need, and that is getting my notes into DEVONthink. Which happens to be extremely cumbersome and on the Mac side of things, plainly spoken, ridiculous. Which, I again agree with you, @tja, is sad.
But there is another app which in a way is a Drafts light and that is 1Writer (iOS/iPadOS only). Tap and write, customizable keyboard row, does not lock its files in a database, but can use an iCloud or Dropbox folder as the default folder. Not in place in DEVONthink To Go, that works only manually. I hope this will be added—if iOS/iPadOS allows this at all, that is.
I save to an iCloud folder being indexed by DEVONthink and let tags and Smart Rules do the rest.
And all that for a really small, subscription free one-time purchase.
I still have not found an equally satisfying note taking app on the Mac.
And because Scrivener was mentioned here: Everybody who knows me from its support forums knows that I love it so much as if I was on the payroll of its maker Lit & Lat. Scrivener and DEVONthink are my key apps I don’t want to be without.
But for my way of note taking as described above it is not the appropriate app. Which I have no problem with as Scrivener while being a rich text app does not have any problem with digesting Markdown.
I also want handwriting and sketching
I mentioned the Notability app; Apple Notes is also useful
When completed, the document is saved in Devonthink in pdf format
I have 1Writer too, but did not test it much.
Can it fold paragraphs and whole chapters?
My three editors are:
Drafts (short texts)
iA Writer (longer texts)
Textastic (code, …)
and now also
Taio
All of them also exist on macOS, iA Writer also on Windows.
My magic combo:
- Obsidian
- Devonthink
- iThoughtsX
With so many excellent plugins for Obsidian it has become very powerful and flexible tool. I would suggest to stay within the Markdown universe (all the three above does) and then learn to use Pandoc for export. I’ve stopped using Scrivener after learning to use Obsidian and Pandoc.
You can always use Bear or Apple Notes and export the file to DTTG as markdown.