For every project I do on the computer, there’s a file
How about general knowledge, unrelated to projects? Contacts, tasks, random ideas, programming knowledge, other knowledge...
Any suggestions for something that improves upon text files?
Text files with convenient hyperlinks to other text files. And maybe pictures; they could be hyperlinked using the same mechanism. -- That’s probably all.
The simplest solution would be something like plain text editor, except that there would be some special syntax for links to other files (the syntax should be easily legible, but something that doesn’t normally appear in text). Those links would be highlighted, and clicking on them would open the other file (or just give focus to the existing windows, if it is already opened).
wikidpad is more or less Markdown files with hyperlinks + some optional metadata
I’d say that the most important thing may be how you use the system, not how it is implemented. (The implementation is important only to the degree it makes the use more or less convenient.) For example, your contacts database will be more useful if you put many contacts in it. If you have a system that allows to put hundreds of random people there, but you can still easily see the important ones, but you can also find people will specific skills when necessary. And meaningful descriptions, so it’s not like a year later you just see an unknown name with a phone number, and have no idea who that is. -- A system of plain text files where you really put all the info, and can run search queries using a command-line tool is better than having Evernote with lousy organization where you don’t even bother write most of the data, so of course there is nothing to find, which in turn makes you less likely to write there anything.
How about general knowledge, unrelated to projects? Contacts, tasks, random ideas, programming knowledge, other knowledge...
That is indeed a problem. Perhaps nvALT will be a solution. One possible showstopper is that as far as I can tell, it can’t display more than one note at a time. As an indication of how I work, right now I have 14 browser windows open. This is typical. Possessed of the ability to count higher than one, I find Single Document View pretty much impossible to work with, and programs that snatch away the document I was looking at just because I wanted to look at another one as well are thoroughly obnoxious.
ETA: nvALT doesn’t itself allow multiple windows, but it supports invoking any external editor to edit notes.
How about general knowledge, unrelated to projects? Contacts, tasks, random ideas, programming knowledge, other knowledge...
Text files with convenient hyperlinks to other text files. And maybe pictures; they could be hyperlinked using the same mechanism. -- That’s probably all.
The simplest solution would be something like plain text editor, except that there would be some special syntax for links to other files (the syntax should be easily legible, but something that doesn’t normally appear in text). Those links would be highlighted, and clicking on them would open the other file (or just give focus to the existing windows, if it is already opened).
wikidpad is more or less Markdown files with hyperlinks + some optional metadata
I’d say that the most important thing may be how you use the system, not how it is implemented. (The implementation is important only to the degree it makes the use more or less convenient.) For example, your contacts database will be more useful if you put many contacts in it. If you have a system that allows to put hundreds of random people there, but you can still easily see the important ones, but you can also find people will specific skills when necessary. And meaningful descriptions, so it’s not like a year later you just see an unknown name with a phone number, and have no idea who that is. -- A system of plain text files where you really put all the info, and can run search queries using a command-line tool is better than having Evernote with lousy organization where you don’t even bother write most of the data, so of course there is nothing to find, which in turn makes you less likely to write there anything.
That is indeed a problem. Perhaps nvALT will be a solution. One possible showstopper is that as far as I can tell, it can’t display more than one note at a time. As an indication of how I work, right now I have 14 browser windows open. This is typical. Possessed of the ability to count higher than one, I find Single Document View pretty much impossible to work with, and programs that snatch away the document I was looking at just because I wanted to look at another one as well are thoroughly obnoxious.
ETA: nvALT doesn’t itself allow multiple windows, but it supports invoking any external editor to edit notes.
wikidpad supports more tabs.
(right click on the node and choose “Activate new tab”, or mouse wheel click on the node)