Please excuse if I as a newbie have overlooked something. I may be requesting a feature that is already there:
I used Circus Ponies Notebook as a laboratory journal - it is/was widely used as a medium for recording laboratory work. Some experiments last a day while others are comprised of sequences of experiments lasting many months. A good lab journal accepts data in many file formats and file types. In CP Notebook the user inserts a new page of a desired type at the appropriate position in the journal. CP Notebook thus keeps track of what came before or after what…
When Circus Ponies decided to close shop, DT was among the alternatives that several users proposed.
While DT allows me to “put the pages of the lab journal” in many nice piles, groups, tags … they are still loose pages in piles. There is no “this figure, image, table … fits on the page right after the description on this other page”.
I really miss a construct in DT that could be called a binder or a dairy in which files could be ordered sequentially. A physical lab book is made up of pages with notes and descriptions of what was done followed by annotated results of the experiments (especially the results section could be many different file types). With DT’s duplicant and replicant handling abilities, I think that it ought to be doable to make a Data construct, a Diary data type, that emphasises the chronological ordering of things.
Notebooks might be more suitable.
You can just drop images, files, etc. on a page. Make notes in markdown, etc.
You can index the note files using DT so you get the nice features in DT.
Curio is an option too. Files, text, lists, mind maps, etc. can be placed on its Idea Spaces. Files can be copied in, or aliased (indexed in DT parlance).
I have both, and use Notebooks for my lab journal.
After much searching, I settled on Curio as my replacement for Circus Ponies Notebook. Very different UI, but an excellent replacement - with a very responsive developer. It works well alongside DT (although DT3 needs the Server edition to get the absolute best from it). I use DT as the document repository with Curio as the place for note-taking and planning. There are a couple fo academics active on the Curio forums.
Notebooks by Alfons Schmid has the advantages that it has IOS versions with sync, and uses open formats. I used to use it a lot, but I never really got on with the UI - very personal view. The Mac app has been built out a lot recently, but still lags the IOS versions a bit
Aquaminds is working on a new version of Notetaker, which was built from the same Next base as CP Notebooks. Not available yet, but will have a similar UI to CPN, which may be attractive.
Growly Notes has the advantage that it’s donation ware, so you could experiment at the cost only o your time