May I summarize your exposé as “a fusion of many already realized techniques”? It makes clear why I’m hopping from one app to the other, even from one device to another. “Hopping” is not always the same as “dropping”, BTW.
What is the beau ideal? Should all those approaches be put together into one monolithic app, or should apps cooperate in a better way? Cooperating autonomously or living in some kind of reservation? Last week I read an article about the super-app WeChat, that seems to be capable of including many other apps, and very successful in doing so.
I had quite forgotten this article, but this week I was (day)dreaming about a model inspired (I thought) by OneNote, where you can embed an Excel sheet in a page, container, or table cell (a spreadsheet could possibly be a nice replacement of native MD tables). I imagined a canvas not very different from what we find in Joplin, with the ability to place vivaria on it the same way as we embed images. A vivarium is no more than a place where some data with a link to a particular brownie (a mini-app) can live. It’s a rectangular space that shows the data (text, graphics, video) as presented by the brownie. It can be shrunk or magnified, and the brownie can be activated, so that he can do his work in a pop-up window or even on the spot. Hmmm… SOA, mashup, isn’t this old stuff? So far for my little phantasy. Now I’m writing this down, I remember that WeChat article again. Anyway, this could be a future for Joplin.
Let’s try another track. Autonomous apps working together. My current frustration is the lack of support by OSs to connect apps by more intelligent or manageable hyperlinks. Currently, they are easily broken. I have a collection of classic TiddlyWikis. I’ve stored them all together in a common folder Dropbox\Memorialen\, so that I can refer from one to the other by relative addresses (no such thing in Joplin). It also works on Un*x platforms. For my personal universum outside this folder I can refer to intermediate Shortcuts — also stored somewhere under Dropbox\Memorialen\. This enables collective modifying them when some structural changes occur (like P:\village\ becoming Q:\city\borough\). Oh, that’s Windows-only technique… Damn!
At the moment, I wouldn’t know (possibly due to my newbiness) how to refer from the outside world to a specific Joplin note. ⇒ Edit: @laurent has just explained how to do it. I’m not sure whether this solution can be reproduced in a universal way on all OSs, but it’s something to experiment with.
Okay, enough for this evening (about 21:15 CET). I conclude with this link. No, correction: you must have a look at TreeSheets. It’s a hierarchical spreadsheet, i.e. tables nested within table cells. It was both a delightful (the concept) and saddening (the doubtful prospect of a bright future) acquaintance for me at the same time. In my case, the dealbreakers were the lack of rich text support within a cell, and my worrying about the future. And I’m not so sure if the daily operating would be as smooth as taking notes in Joplin. OTOH, it’s free, and the learning curve is not as steep as TheBrain’s.